Health inequality: generic term used to designate differences, variations, and disparities in the health achievements of individuals and groups
Doesn’t imply moral judgment
Health inequity: inequalities in health that are deemed to be unfair or stemming from some form of injustice
Most of the health inequalities across social groups are unjust because they reflect an unfair distribution of the underlying social determinants of health
Measuring social group differences in health: defining certain social groups a priori and then examining the health differentials between them
Assumes the existence of meaningful social groupings that reflect the unequal distribution of resources and life opportunities across segments of society
Measuring the distribution of health status across individuals in a population: measures health inequality based on the distribution of health across individuals
The socioeconomic gradient in health: the worse health of those who are at a lower level of socioeconomic position-whether measured by income, occupational grade, or educational attainment; even those who are already in relatively high socioeconomic groups
Not just the conditions associated with severe disadvantage that explain socioeconomic inequalities in health among those who have attained relatively high levels of socioeconomic position
The material interpretation of health inequalities: emphasises the graded relation between socioeconomic position and access to tangible material conditions
The psychosocial interpretation: ascribes the existence of health inequalities to the direct or indirect effects of stress stemming from either being lower on the socioeconomic hierarchy, or living under conditions of relative socioeconomic disadvantage
Absolute income hypothesis: an individual's health depends on their own level of income
Relative income hypothesis: health depends not just on one's own level of income, but also on the incomes of others in society
Social capital: the resources available to individuals and to society through social relationships
Area or place effects: the health effects of variables that tell us something about the places or contexts, and not simply the people who inhabit them
Collective effect: aggregated group properties that exert an influence on health over and above individual characteristics
Contextual effect: the broader political, cultural, or institutional context, for example the presence or absence of features that are intrinsic to places, such as infrastructural resources, economic policies of states, social and public support programmes
Compositional explanation for area differences: ascribes the variations in health outcomes to the characteristics of individuals who reside in them
Life course effects: how health status at any given age, for a given birth cohort, reflects not only contemporary conditions but embodiment of prior living circumstances, in utero onwards
Latent effects: the early life environment affects adult health independent of intervening experience
Pathway effects: the early life environment sets individuals onto life trajectories that in turn affect health status over time
Cumulative effects: the intensity and duration of exposure to unfavourable environments adversely affects health status, according to a dose-response relation