Disadvantage and Mortality: New Evidence from the OPCS Longitudinal Study

Abstract

What follows principally is concerned with relative differences in cancer incidence and mortality between sections of the community who are more or less disadvantaged. At the outset, however, we wish to make it clear that most of the socioeconomic measures that we use are not direct measures of disadvantage. There is no simple identity between those who are in any particular socioeconomic category, and those who are ‘advantaged’ or ‘disadvantaged’. Nevertheless, the socioeconomic measures we employ are related to levels of disadvantage, this relationship being best understood in the following terms. Those at the bottom end of a socioeconomic scale are more likely than those higher up the scale to experience disadvantage in various forms, and currently are less likely to experience advantage. The limited pattern of social mobility that exists means that this relationship between current socioeconomic position and disadvantage holds for any point in time, looking either pro- or retrospectively from the present.

There is no single state of deprivation or disadvantage. These terms, as well as others like ‘social problem’ or ‘inequality’, are widely used and broadly interpreted.

Brown and Madge (1982)