17.4.6 Conclusion
In this section, we set out to determine the extent to which differences in economic circumstances contribute to health inequality across individuals. Do the poor experience worse health because they are poor? Answering this question is difficult because worse health would be expected to be associated with lower income even without being caused by it. This has driven researchers to search for phenomena that generate variation in income or wealth without being caused by or associated with health. In high-income countries, this research enterprise has tended to produce evidence indicative of no impact of income on health in adulthood, or effects that are small in comparison to the observed income-health gradient, suggesting that ...
