When you ask people what impacts health you'll get a lot of different answers: Access to good health care and preventative services, personal behavior, exposure to germs or pollution and stress. But if you dig a little deeper you'll find a clear dividing line, and it boils down to one word: money.
People whose household income is more than $75,000 a year have very different perceptions of what affects health than those whose household income is less than $25,000. This is one key finding in a poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. One third of respondents who are low income say lack of money has a harmful effect on health.
This is the case for 29-year-old Anna Beer of Spokane, Wash. She lives with her husband in the basement of her father's house. Beer got laid off from her job as a nanny last summer. Now she is attending college in the hope that she will get a better than minimum-wage job when she graduates. Beer's husband earns $10 an hour working at a retail store. "This is probably the most poor we've been," Beer says.
[For more of this story, written by Patti Neighmond, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/03/02/389347123/people-with-low-incomes-say-they-pay-a-price-in-poor-health]
Comments (0)