Health equity in England: The Marmot Review, 10 years on (January 2020)

Summary

The Health Foundation commissioned the Institute of Health Equity to examine progress in addressing health inequalities in England, 10 years on from the landmark study Fair Society, Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review).

Led by Professor Sir Michael Marmot, the review explores changes since 2010 in five policy objectives:

• giving every child the best start in life
• enabling all people to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives
• ensuring a healthy standard of living for all
• creating fair employment and good work for all
• creating and developing healthy and sustainable places and communities.

For each objective the report outlines areas of progress and decline since 2010 and proposes recommendations for future action, setting out a clear agenda at a national, regional and local level. 

Content

The report highlights that:

• people can expect to spend more of their lives in poor health
• improvements to life expectancy have stalled, and declined for the poorest 10% of women
• the health gap has grown between wealthy and deprived areas 
• place matters – living in a deprived area of the North East is worse for your health than living in a similarly deprived area in London, to the extent that life expectancy is nearly five years less.