‘Good luck to them if they can get it’: exploring working class men's understandings and experiences of income inequality and material standards
Open Access
- 6 June 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Sociology of Health & Illness
- Vol. 29 (5), 711-729
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01012.x
Abstract
This paper seeks to contribute to the recent debate within the field of inequalities in health that has focused on the relationship between income distribution and health. This has contested the extent to which the main effects of income on health are not directly related to material standards but operate through psychosocial mechanisms, linked to how people experience and perceive their relative position. However, whilst this has focused attention on the qualitative dimensions of income inequality as a potential determinant of health inequality, very little empirical work has directly examined lay perspectives. In this study I attempted to address this gap by exploring how two groups of working class men living in contrasting socio-economic areas understood and experienced differences in income and material circumstances and how these were perceived to impact on their health. This study shows that the anger and resentment felt by these men had their roots largely in the perceptions of others and the way others treated them, rather than in income differentials per se. There was little evidence of feelings of shame or inferiority. For men at the bottom of the social ladder, financial hardship was additionally perceived as having the greatest impact on their health and well-being.Keywords
This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
- The modern and the postmodern in health promotionPublished by Taylor & Francis Ltd ,2010
- Is subjective social status a more important determinant of health than objective social status? Evidence from a prospective observational study of Scottish menSocial Science & Medicine, 2005
- The determinants of health: structure, context and agencySociology of Health & Illness, 2003
- Health, Inequality, and Economic DevelopmentJournal of Economic Literature, 2003
- Beyond ‘beer, fags, egg and chips’? Exploring lay understandings of social inequalities in healthSociology of Health & Illness, 2003
- Self-rated economic condition and the health of elderly persons in Hong KongSocial Science & Medicine (1982), 2002
- On the methodological, theoretical and philosophical context of health inequalities research: a critiqueSocial Science & Medicine (1982), 2001
- Symposium on Amartya Sen's philosophy: 5 Adaptive preferences and women's optionsEconomics and Philosophy, 2001
- Whose fault is it? People's own conceptions of the reasons for health inequalitiesSocial Science & Medicine (1982), 1997
- Why do poor people behave poorly? Variation in adult health behaviours and psychosocial characteristics by stages of the socioeconomic lifecourseSocial Science & Medicine (1982), 1997