In the Globe and Mail, December 29, 1997.

Letter to the Editor:

Lest Globe readers believe that it is only the less well-off that suffer from
the effects of inequality (Gap grows between rich, poor, Dec. 23) an
impressive body of public health research indicates that the well-off show
detrimental health effects as well.
   Policies that transfer resources from the less well-off to the wealthy,
such as we are now seeing in Canada, are associated with decreasing social
cohesion and increased societal malaise.
   This malaise can take many forms including increased death and illness
rates, violence, and as is already evident in the case of Metropolitan
Toronto, greater use of food banks and shelters for the homeless.
   In the end, all members of a society, both the disadvantaged and the
well-off, experience these effects through a process of what social
epidemiologists call "the symptoms of disintegration."  In fact, after 20
years of increasing inequality in Britain, the best well-off in Britain now
show poorer health than the least well-off in Sweden.
   While the well-off in Rosedale and other such communities may reap the
economic benefit of increased investments, they begin to become subject to
the same threats to health -- deteriorating health care and school systems,
crime in the streets, unsafe traffic --  as do the rest of Canadians.

Dennis Raphael
Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences
University of Toronto




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  From new transmitters came the old stupidities.
  Wisdom was passed on from mouth to mouth.
            -Bertolt Brecht
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Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Acting Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8

416-978-7567
fax:416-978-2087