The poor die earlier

More than 2,600 deaths in England from some of the most common types of cancer could be avoided each year if all cancer patients had the same chance of survival as the most affluent section of society, a new piece of research suggests.

The study found that the most well- off patients enjoyed a higher survival rate than the poorest patients. Researchers from King's College London suggested that more cancer patients from deprived backgrounds were diagnosed when the disease was at a late stage and often harder to treat – leading to the differences in survival.

Margreet Lüchtenborg, lead author of the study based at King's College London, said: "This study shows that deprivation leads to inequality in survival for the most common cancers in England, especially in the month immediately after diagnosis."

Chris Carrigan, head of the NCIN, said: "Deprivation is one of the biggest causes of cancer inequality in this country. We know that people from more deprived areas are more likely to smoke or be very overweight. They are also less likely to be aware of signs and symptoms of cancer, probably leading to later diagnosis, which may further increase their chances of dying from their disease."

In the United States a new study calculated the number of deaths attributable to social factors. After calculating for the relative risk estimates of mortality, researchers obtained estimates for each social factor. Individual social factors included education, poverty, health insurance status, employment status and job-stress , social support, racism or discrimination, housing conditions and early childhood stressors. Area-level social factors included area-level poverty, income inequality, deteriorating built environment, racial segregation, crime and violence, social capital and availability of open or green spaces. They found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in 2000 were attributable to low education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality and 39,000 to area-level poverty.

Meanwhile, the life-expectancy in many parts of America is on the decline. Over the last decade, the nation has experienced a widening gap between the most and least healthy places to live. In some parts of the United States, men and women are dying younger on average than their counterparts in nations such as Syria, Panama and Vietnam. In 737 U.S. counties out of more than 3,000, life expectancies for women declined between 1997 and 2007. For life expectancy to decline in a developed nation is rare. Setbacks on this scale have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish Flu of 1918, according to demographers.

The widening gulf between the healthiest and least healthy populations is partly due to wealth. A key finding of the data is that "inequality appears to be growing in the U.S.," said Eileen Crimmins, a gerontologist at USC who also co-chaired the 2011 National Academies panel on life expectancies.