The persistence of socioeconomic inequalities in health, even in the highly developed ‘welfare states’ of Western Europe, is one of the great disappointments of public health. Health inequalities have not only persisted while welfare states were being built up, but on some measures have even...

Equal treatment for equal needs, irrespective of socio-economic position, is a major issue in many countries. Although in the Netherlands differences in utilization of health care between population groups are less pronounced than in most other countries, some differences by socio-economic...

The uneven distribution of psychosocial stressors as well as their differential health impact have been suggested as a possible explanation for socio-economic inequalities in health. We assessed the importance of both explanations, using data from the baseline of a Dutch longitudinal study. The...

In chronically ill patients, mobility develops more unfavorably in persons with low socio-economic status (SES) than in their better-off counterparts. Using longitudinal data from the Dutch GLOBE study (a study of health and living conditions in Eindhoven and its surroundings), the present study...

There is evidence to support the view that both hostility and depressive symptoms are psychological risk factors for ischaemic heart disease (IHD), additional to the effects of lifestyle and biomedical risk factors. Both are also more common in lower socioeconomic groups. Studies to find out how...

We sought to examine how different activities performed during employment gaps are associated with later cognitive function and change. Five cognitive measures were used to indicate cognitive impairment of 18,259 respondents to the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (ages...

Although higher education has been associated with lower mortality rates in many studies, the effect of potential improvements in educational distribution on future mortality levels is unknown. We therefore estimated the impact of projected increases in higher education on mortality in European...

Healthy life expectancy is a composite measure of length and quality of life and an important indicator of health in aging populations. There are few cross-country comparisons of socioeconomic differences in healthy life expectancy. Most of the existing comparisons focus on Western Europe and...