New research from US academics draws upon the well-documented association between income inequality and worsened self-reported health status, raised death rates, and reduced life expectancy to address that lack of understanding. This Research Update sets out the key findings of a recently published paper examining the association between income inequality and risk of death and between income inequality and readmission among patients hospitalised for heart failure, pneumonia and heart attacks. By doing so it attempts to explain not only the effect of environmental factors, but also the geographic variation in patient outcomes.
