ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the effects of 'relative' poverty in developed countries on child health. The relationship between relative poverty and child health has often been considered ahistorically and with a narrow focus on the experience in a particular country. The data presented in this chapter from various developed countries show a consistent positive correlation of adverse health outcomes, including death and a range of illnesses, parent-reported morbidity and factors associated with poor health, and low socio-economic status (SES) measured in a variety of ways. The measures of SES reflect the experience of relative poverty of individual families or geographically defined populations. There is a consistent positive correlation between low socio-economic status and adverse late pregnancy and child health outcomes in developed countries which holds for mortality at all ages and for measures of medically defined morbidity and parent-reported morbidity.
