The Health and Social Care Alliance (the ALLIANCE) has highlighted the publication of a report by the Scottish Health Equity Research Unit (SHERU) which looks at health and socioeconomic divides in Scotland. Key findings from the report suggests that core outcomes related to inequalities and health are not improving significantly and some are getting worse.
The report also highlights concerns around key population-level indicators of health and living standards, including that life expectancy is no longer rising and that average living standards have yet to return to pre-2010 levels of growth
Key Findings
- Core outcomes related to inequalities and health are not improving significantly and some are getting worse. They have not found evidence that policy is driving improvements in socioeconomic or health inequalities.
- Despite the Scottish Government putting in place a range of strategies and policies to tackle inequalities, public sector leaders are not doing enough to understand impact to drive improvement.
- A lack of publicly available data of sufficient quality makes it very difficult to assess whether policies are working or not.
- However, the overall lack of progress in tackling socioeconomic and health inequalities indicates that policies are not working in the right way or at the scale required to improve outcomes.
- Key population-level indicators of health and living standards are showing concerning trends:
- Life expectancy is no longer rising. While deaths relating to COVID-19 play a part in explaining recent falls, the deviation from the long-run trend dates back to the early 2010s.
- Average living standards, measured by household incomes, have never returned to pre2010 levels of growth and have fallen since 2019.
- Underneath the headline population averages, inequalities between different parts of the population remain wide. There are some marginal changes, both good and bad, but no systematic closing of gaps.
- Analysis shows:
- More people in Scotland are in relative poverty now than they were in the pre-pandemic period. 24% of children and 39% of households headed by an adult under 25 are in relative poverty compared to a population average of 21%.
- The proportion of young adults not participating in work, education or training, is now higher than pre-pandemic. People in Scotland are now more likely to be inactive due to long-term illnesses.
- Food insecurity, homelessness, and fuel poverty are all higher than they were pre-pandemic. People experiencing homelessness are more likely to cite unsafe situations and mental health conditions in their applications, and the number of deaths among people experiencing homelessness has increased.
- Gaps in education between students in deprived and non-deprived areas remain high. The pandemic led to changes in some measures of attainment inequality (both positive and negative), but the gap has now broadly returned to pre-pandemic levels.
- A higher number of children are born in deprived areas compared to non-deprived ones. Gaps in early health outcomes, such as low birthweight and developmental concerns, are wider than they were pre-pandemic.
- Men are also of particular concern, with higher mortality rates from alcohol, drug misuse, and suicide compared to the general population. Drug-related mortality has fallen from its pandemic peak, but increased in 2023, while alcohol mortality also increased in 2023.
The report looks at several areas of Scottish Government policy focus but finds that the data is either unavailable or unreliable enough to measure impacts. One example is the Scottish Child Payment. While models suggest it should significantly reduce child poverty, there is currently have no evidence of this impact reflected in the official data.
To read the full report CLICK HERE
