"Healthy, Wealthy and Wise?" Revisited: An Analysis of the Causal Pathways from Socioeconomic Status to Health

In health economics, there is little dispute that the socioeconomic status
(SES) of individuals is positively correlated with their health status. The size
of the body of literature documenting that wealthy and well- educated people
generally enjoy better health and longer life is impressive.1
The robustness of
this association is underscored by the fact that the so- called health- wealth
gradient has been detected in different times, countries, populations, age
structures, and for both men and women. Moreover, the results are largely
insensitive to the choice of SES measures (such as wealth, income, education, occupation, or social class) and health outcomes.