Epidemiological approach to the explanation of social differentiation in mortality: the Whitehall studies.

A consistent feature of mortality statistics in England and Wales are the social class differences which have even widened in the decade from 1971 to 1981. Two large studies of British Civil Servants, the Whitehall and Whitehall II studies, add to the understanding of social class differences in mortality and morbidity. Some of their results are presented to illustrate current concepts of social class differences in health. There is no evidence for an effect of health selection. The magnitude of social class differences vary for different causes of death, presumably as a sign of the effect of specific factors for specific disease. The observation that social class differences apply to most causes of death, however, suggest that factors like early life experience, difference in behaviour, material and psychosocial conditions act in an unspecific way.