Health and the Income Inequality Hypothesis  Health and the
Income Inequality Hypothesis  Download file This release is also
available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.  Over the last decade,
the proposition that inequality in income—and not just poverty
per se—leads to detrimental health consequences has gained
increasing currency in public health circles. This belief has
become a popular topic within schools of public health,
scholarly journals and health philanthropies, and has surfaced
in political discussions and in the popular media both in the
United States and abroad.  This newly fashionable “inequality
hypothesis” predicts that the risk of illness rises importantly
in a society with income disparities. Indeed: it implies that
redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor (and thereby
reducing measured income inequality) should in itself produce an
improvement in national health.  Not surprisingly, many
progressives have reacted enthusiastically to a thesis that
points to the redistribution of wealth as