Social determinants of health in poverty

The social determinants of health in poverty describe the factors that affect impoverished populations' health and health inequality. Inequalities in health stem from the conditions of people's lives, including living conditions, work environment, age, and other social factors, and how these affect people's ability to respond to illness.^[1] These conditions are also shaped by political, social, and economic structures.^[1] The majority of people around the globe do not meet their potential best health because of a "toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics".^[1] Daily living conditions work together with these structural drivers to result in the social determinants of health.^[1]

Poverty and poor health are inseparably linked.^[1] Poverty has many dimensions – material deprivation (of food, shelter, sanitation, and safe drinking water), social exclusion, lack of education, unemployment, and low income – that all work together to reduce opportunities, limit choices, undermine hope, and, as a result, threaten health.^[2] Poverty has been linked to higher prevalence of many health conditions, including increased risk of chronic disease, injury, deprived infant development, stress, anxiety, depression, and premature death.^[2] According to Loppie and Wien, these health conditions of poverty most burden outlying groups such as women, children, ethnic minorities, and disabled people.^[2] Social determinants of health – like child development, education, living and working conditions, and healthcare^[1]- are of special importance to the impoverished.

According to Moss, socioeconomic factors that affect impoverished populations such as education, income inequality, and occupation, represent the strongest and most consistent predictors of health and mortality.^[3] The inequalities in the apparent circumstances of individual's lives, like individuals' access to health care, schools, their conditions of work and leisure, households, communities, towns, or cities,^[1] affect people's ability to lead a flourishing life and maintain health, according to the World Health Organization. The inequitable distribution of health-harmful living conditions, experiences, and structures, is not by any means natural, "but is the result of a toxic combination of poor social policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements, and bad politics".^[1] Therefore, the conditions of individual's daily life are responsible for the social determinants of health and a major part of health inequities between and within countries.^[1] Along with these social conditions, "Gender, education, occupation, income, ethnicity, and place of residence are all closely linked to people's access to, experiences of, and benefits from health care."^[1] Social determinants of disease can be attributed to broad social forces such as racism, gender inequality, poverty, violence, and war.^[4] This is important because health quality, health distribution, and social protection of health in a population affect the development status of a nation.^[1] Since health has been considered a fundamental human right, one author suggests the social determinants of health determine the distribution of human dignity.^[5]