Guest Editorial: Understanding the causes of health inequalities: Incorporating personal, local, national, and global perspectives

Abstract

Sometimes it can be difficult to ground, in easily understandable facts and ideas, the often detailed and complex statistics and theories about health inequalities. Some eyes glaze over when the 10-year changes in standardised mortality ratios in the first and tenth equivalised family income deciles are discussed. What, however, could be easier to understand, or closer to home, than the results of McCracken’s statistical modelling, which suggests that in NSW each year almost 5000 premature deaths might be prevented if we could remove all inequality in our society.