SALUD Y POSICIÓN SOCIO-ECONÓMICA: EVIDENCIA EMPÍRICA RECIENTE EN EL PANORAMA INTERNACIONAL Y EN ESPAÑA

One of the main goals in modern welfare societies is to guarantee equality in health and the access to health care of all citizens. However, there is an extensive literature which documents that in practice self-reported measures of health, mortality rates, chronic illnesses and other health indicators are inversely related to socio-economic position. This article aims at reviewing the scientific literature which examines the complex relationship between income, education and occupation with the level of health, focusing on the increasing recent literature about the impact on health and health inequalities of economic cycles. We also devote a section in this article to discuss some of the recent public initiatives to attenuate socio economic related inequalities in health in Spain as well as in other developed countries. An important conclusion of this paper is that in spite of the well documented literature about the existence inequalities in health related to socio economic characteristics, public initiatives to attenuate and monitor inequalities are limited, at least in the Spanish context