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This article investigates whether equity is achieved in health service utilization by children and adolescents in Great Britain. The British National Health Service aims to provide a comprehensive and universal health care system based on the principle that health care should be equally available to every citizen without exception. Research has concentrated overwhelmingly on equity in relation to socioeconomic status, usually measured by occupational class. It has consistently been shown that health service use in the population as a whole is greater among groups of lower occupational status compared to the professional and managerial classes, leading some to conclude that equity has been successfully achieved by the National Health Service. Most of these studies have used occupational class as the sole indicator of socioeconomic status. However, it may be that other measures capture dimensions of socioeconomic status which are missed in occupational data alone. Research on the use of health services in Great Britain has focused upon ethnicity less commonly than upon socioeconomic status.

This paper investigates inequalities in children's reported morbidity by parental social class compared with indicators of material disadvantage, using data for children aged 0 to 16 years from the British General Household Surveys for 199 1-94. Family structure, employment status and receipt of benefit are more closely associated with differentials in health for children than parental social class. Children in lone parent families living on Income Support are most likely to report chronic illness, whereas for children living with two parents the unemployment of the family head is most clearly associated with reported morbidity. These health inequalities are more pronounced in children under 10 years than children aged 10-6 years. Children living in local authority housing were significantly more likely to report chronic illness. South Asian children were less likely to have a longstanding limiting illness compared to the white population. This research shows that the economic position of the family, and especially material deprivation, is more closely associated with children's health status than social class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]