Does Your Income Affect Your Health?

Our level of income directly affects our health.  Did you know that?  How much money you make helps to determine how healthy you will be.  Doesn’t really make sense, if you don’t’ look at the broader picture.  In the big picture, however, here is the view: you are educated, have a degree, and are exposed to tons of information during your college years.  You are exposed to health classes, athletes, and all sorts of professional people who already understand the importance of health in your life.

                You graduate college, your income levels are quite nice, and you have the opportunity to purchase magazines, health and fitness of course.  Can you see how your education and intelligence levels affect your health now?  This is a generalization that has proven itself time and again.  All you have to do is observe your developed countries versus the third world, underdeveloped countries. 

Standard of living and health are directly related. Past the consideration of intelligence development, our level of education and income plays a tremendous role in our ability to educate ourselves about the health options we should exercise. Affordable fitness centers are one of the nicer privileges of higher income.  Most fitness centers provide their customers with individualized weight and exercise programs that further advance the customer’s health.

                Having higher income levels provides us with access to fitness centers, better choices for our eating patterns, and better medical care.

                It is in the final section of the previous sentence that there is found a real benefit of higher income, in direct relation to our health.  Higher levels of education and income almost always have access to better medical care. The availability of better care, whether it is through better company paid insurance, life in a metropolitan area versus rural area, or simply being able to afford a more specialized doctor when the situation warrants.

                In most cases, higher income families live in more populated areas, with access to better doctors and larger medical facilities. Often their employers have nurses or doctors that are retained, if not on staff, as emergencies warrant.

If the evidence presented above is not enough to satisfy your curiosity concerning the role income plays in our health, take the time to visit the US Census.  This information is available through the internet. There you will find all kinds of statistics, from income averages in areas of the United States, to education levels in those same places.  Also available is information related to the household.  Check for yourself.  You can see a direct relationship in many areas of the country between income levels and health statistics for that area. 

                It is sad indeed, that many of the people who are in the greatest need are not able to get that need met.  Socialized medicine as been studied as a possible solution to our some of our health problems, but when studied in detail, socialized medicine really does not improve the level of health for the population, it just makes medical care free and generally of less quality.