The role of income and social protection for inequalities in health, evidence and policy implications.

The starting point for our work on income and social protection, as for the DRIVERS project as a whole, are the social determinants of health (SDH). Three of the most important resources for health are addressed in DRIVERS, namely childhood conditions/early development, working life/working conditions, and income and economic resources. These areas of life constitute important resources for health and health inequalities, and are at the same time also targets for major policy areas and efforts. Families and individuals draw on economic resources that they generate themselves, but also on collective resources provided through the welfare state. The supply and quality of these collective resources will likely influence people’s ability to sustain their health and wellbeing, and the less people have in terms of individual resources, the more important it is that they can draw on collective resources. The work has therefore been centred on welfare states, social protection policies, incomes and health in different social strata. A general methodological and conceptual issue is how to best capture the types and strengths of welfare state efforts. The empirical research undertaken focuses on two broad issues, namely 1) how income and poverty are related to health and mortality, and 2) the importance of different aspects of social protection policies for health in different social groups over the life course. Also, we address the economic consequences of poor health and the extent to which these consequences can be buffered by the welfare state. New data sources have been employed to assess the importance of poverty, income and income inequalities on health inequalities and to explore how social policy institutions are linked to health inequalities across the EU Member State.