Nursing Sociology : How Class Affects Health
Title: How Socio Economic Class Affects Health.
Module : SHN 123
Word Count: 2118
Student Number : 558601
Inequalities in health between social groups have long been a dominant feature of British Society. Evidence suggests that people in the lower social scale suffer from ill health more than the middle and upper classes. This essay aims to address the reasons for this trend by primarily looking at evidence found in the Black Report, Acheson Report and the Marmot Review and by evaluating the explanations given to support the evidence.
The concept of social class is wide ranging – people can move between classes or have character/ occupational traits that cross more than one class. (Giddens, 2001: p282) described Social Class as ‘A large scale grouping of people who share common resources which strongly influence the type of lifestyle they are able to lead.’
Government statisticians have measured Social Class using the ‘Registrar General’s Social Class’ (RGSC) scale. First used in Britain in 1911, the census divided people into six social classes based on the occupation of the head of household; Men were allocated on basis of their occupation, Married/cohabiting women on basis of their partner’s occupation, Children on basis of their father’s occupation and Single women on basis of their own occupation.
Following the 2001 census the scale used to measure class changed to the ‘National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification (NS-SEC)’. The change of scale reflected the changing nature of occupations, the growth of middle class professions, the levels of social esteem that these jobs attracted and it ranked the occupations according to the level of responsibility that the job entailed.
The Black Report published in 1980 was a report commissioned by the Labour Government. It used the Registrar General scale as follows;
I) Professional
II) Managerial/Technical
III (NM) Skilled (non-manual)
III(M) Skilled (manual)
IV) Partly Skilled
V) Unskilled
Module : SHN 123
Word Count: 2118
Student Number : 558601
Inequalities in health between social groups have long been a dominant feature of British Society. Evidence suggests that people in the lower social scale suffer from ill health more than the middle and upper classes. This essay aims to address the reasons for this trend by primarily looking at evidence found in the Black Report, Acheson Report and the Marmot Review and by evaluating the explanations given to support the evidence.
The concept of social class is wide ranging – people can move between classes or have character/ occupational traits that cross more than one class. (Giddens, 2001: p282) described Social Class as ‘A large scale grouping of people who share common resources which strongly influence the type of lifestyle they are able to lead.’
Government statisticians have measured Social Class using the ‘Registrar General’s Social Class’ (RGSC) scale. First used in Britain in 1911, the census divided people into six social classes based on the occupation of the head of household; Men were allocated on basis of their occupation, Married/cohabiting women on basis of their partner’s occupation, Children on basis of their father’s occupation and Single women on basis of their own occupation.
Following the 2001 census the scale used to measure class changed to the ‘National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification (NS-SEC)’. The change of scale reflected the changing nature of occupations, the growth of middle class professions, the levels of social esteem that these jobs attracted and it ranked the occupations according to the level of responsibility that the job entailed.
The Black Report published in 1980 was a report commissioned by the Labour Government. It used the Registrar General scale as follows;
I) Professional
II) Managerial/Technical
III (NM) Skilled (non-manual)
III(M) Skilled (manual)
IV) Partly Skilled
V) Unskilled