ABSTRACT
A special problem of studying health inequalities in developing countries is the fact that in most of them the registration of births and deaths is seriously incomplete and, in some, a considerable proportion of the population cannot state their age with any accuracy. The country in which health inequalities have been most intensively studied has been the United Kingdom. Damaging health behaviours are social class correlated but those that are known seem to explain much less than half of the social class variations, and some lifestyles are strongly influenced by the social environment. Societies which have less inequality in income, less variations in housing standards and better working conditions seem to have less health inequalities between socioeconomic groups. Wide differences are also found between social classes in other dimensions of health such as perceived health, fitness and well-being.
