The assumption that social class inequalities in health are a persistent feature of the life-course has been questioned in a recent issue of this journal. On the evidence of mortality and chronic illness, the pattern in youth in Britain appears to be characterised by the lack of class...

In the British context, there is a widespread assumption that inequalities in health between social classes are persistent feature of the life-course, an assumption appearing most plausible by reference to the more accessible published statistics on the issue. However, the age-bands typically...

Ethnic and religious minorities often suffer disadvantages both in socio-economic status and in health. Data from the West of Scotland Twenty-07 study suggest some differences in morbidity between those descended from Irish Catholic migrants of the great emigration from 1840 onwards and others....

As one of several explanations for class differentials in health, health selection has received remarkably little systematic attention in the inequalities debate. It is widely regarded as having (at best) a very minor role in the production of inequalities, and a theoretical debt to social...

Parents' proxy reports of longstanding illness in their 15 year children are compared with the young people's own reports, both overall and between different reporting contexts; mother alone, father alone and both parents together. Parents over-report longstanding, but not limiting longstanding,...

Against the background of increasing concern about levels of physical activity among young people, this paper reports the results of a cross-national comparison between two longitudinal studies of young people in Glasgow, Scotland and Dunedin, New Zealand, which used similar methods of...

We have previously shown, using a wide range od health measures, that there is little evidence of consistent class gradients in health in adolescence. This paper examines the possibility that those findings were an artefact of the measure of class used. Seven indicators of health, development...

This paper aims to explain previously described increases in self-reported psychological distress between 1987 and 2006 among samples identical in respect of age (15 years), school year and geographical location (West of Scotland). Such increases might be explained by changes in exposure...

Previous studies found lower substance use in schools achieving better examination and truancy results than expected, given their pupil populations (high value-added schools). This study examines whether these findings are replicated in West Scotland and whether school ethos indicators focussing...