A healthy and wealthy future

A new report from the University of Canberra’s National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling has highlighted a shocking symptom of the wealth gap – 65% of those who live on lower income levels suffer from long-term health problems, compared with just 15% of those on higher incomes.

According to the report, commissioned by Catholic Health Australia, this equates to a life expectancy among lower income earners that is three years lower than their wealthy counterparts.

The report, to be officially launched today, is being used by Catholic Health Australia to call for drastic changes to government policies on health, aged care and community care.

This sort of research should reshape and refocus our preventative health programs, and should probably also have a big influence on which Australians receive higher levels of health care financial support.

But as CHA has also pointed out, one of the key results of this research must be a commitment to improve education levels.

Perhaps the survey result that I found most shocking was that educational status (that is, the level of the education system you reached) is more of a risk factor for heart disease deaths than high cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking combined.

That’s simply terrible, and shows that we need a much wider approach to health issues.

We need to think about how keeping kids in high school could improve life expectancy.

We need to think about the impact improving participation levels in tertiary education could reduce later health problems.

We need to think about how boosting training and skills could bring health costs down.

We should particularly be thinking about how business training – both giving people skills to start companies, and improving the skills of those already running businesses – could have huge knock-on effects.

Not only would business training help lift the business owner up the wealth/health ladder, but it would benefit employees of the business.

This report raises questions that cannot be ignored, and requires creative, long-term solutions that business can help drive.