ABSTRACT
Inequalities in human health take a number of distinctive forms in Britain today. In this report, most attention is given to differences in health as measured over the years between the social (or more strictly occupational) classes. These differences are highlighted in Table 1 by comparing rates of mortality among men and women in each of the Registrar General’s 5 classes. Taking the two extremes as a point of comparison it can be seen that for both men and women the risk of death before retirement is two-and-a-half times as great in class V (unskilled manual workers and their wives), as it is in class I (professional men and their wives). If attention is confined to age-standardised deaths rather than all deaths of those aged 15-64 then the ratio for class V males becomes a little under twice (1.8) that of class I (OPCS, 1978, p. 37).
