Social inequalities in health: Notes in the margins

This essay makes notes in the margins of the vast corpus of work now encompassed by what is termed ‘social inequalities in health’, the best of which provides important evidence about what health inequalities are, how they come about and what might be done about them. However, much of this work still does not properly connect with either wider public debates about political economy or those focussed points of attention and concern which can be found in people's responses to the conditions in which inequality is experienced. The consequence of this is the production of policies to address health inequalities, which ignore the politics of those policies and further undermine those people already pushed to the margins by economic and political developments.