¹Centre for Sociological Theory and Research on Health, Research Department of Infection and Population Health, UCL, Morimer Market Centre, London WC1E 6JB

Abstract

This brief and polemical paper suggests that one crucial but under-investigated generator of health inequalities in Britain is the strategic decision-making of the wealthy and powerful. It is argued that the post-1970s dynamic between class and state which underpins this decision-making has been largely ignored by medical sociology in favour of repeated studies of the poor and powerless. Two case studies concerning (1) the pensions crisis, and (2) the global financial crisis, and their ramifications for health inequalities, are considered in some detail. A case is made that medical sociology neglects its critical and public obligations at its own peril.