Mortality, long-term illness and deprivation in rural and metropolitan wards of England and Wales

The relationships between mortality, limiting long-term illness and indicat ors of social deprivation were investigated using regression analysis on da ta for rural wards,metropolitan wards and the remaining wards in England an d Wales. Regional differences were controlled. In rural wards, people had b etter health than average and slightly better health than would be expected from their deprivation scores. Average levels of health in rural areas wer e only weakly related to deprivation, which was partly but not fully due to the restricted range of average deprivation values in rural wards. In metr opolitan areas, relatively poor levels of health were largely explained by social deprivation, but people in Inner London were healthier than might be expected from measures of deprivation. The relationship between health and social deprivation is therefore not uniform over England and Wales, but va ries between geographical types of area. One consequence is that resource a llocation on the basis of social deprivation would put the populations of r ural areas and Inner London at an advantage. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.