Research Note: German income distribution and infant mortality.

Irene Wennemo's paper "Infant mortality, public policy and inequality: a comparison of 18 industrialised countries 1950-85" takes an important step further in the understanding of the relationship between social policy and infant mortality in developed countries. The German figures for 1981 can therefore be seen as a potential refutation of the effect of income distribution on national mortality rates which turned into a confirmation. In countries where data are lacking, one might almost suggest that life expectancy should be used as a proxy for income distribution, or infant mortality for relative poverty. But that would come unstuck among pre1989 Eastern European countries. Their mortality rates were relatively high despite comparatively small differences in income. The link between income distribution and national mortality rates which Wennemo and the author have shown has important implications for the understanding of the relationship between health inequalities and national mortality rates. It implies that health inequalities are not simply variations in health round an independently established national average, but that the amount of health inequality in each society represents a net burden on overall national standards of health.