Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Politicians must tackle national poverty at its roots
One of the little known facts about the people who die from coronavirus is that a high percentage of them are poor.
Although it is not yet clear why, the statistics show that the poorer you are, the more likely you are to die from this terrible disease.
The same is true for many other diseases, like cancer, heart and stroke conditions. That is why the average life expectancy of poor people is well below the national average and much lower than for people who live in affluent areas.
In parts of Glasgow, for example, there is a gap of up to 20 years in the life expectancy between better-off and poorer people, even though in some cases they live within only a mile of each other.
Modern medicine teaches us that the life chances of a child are often determined within the first year after birth.
Those who are born into poor families are much more likely to have fewer chances in life than those born to middle class families. In general, poorer children end up with lower educational qualifications, poorer health, fewer employment opportunities and lower income throughout their adult lives.
The austerity of recent years has made this situation worse. The huge cuts in social security benefits, the cuts to the living standards of the working poor and essential public services have all contributed to our society becoming much more unequal and unfair than it used to be.
Increased poverty is the main reason why we have educational attainment and health inequality gaps, a fall in average life spans, and many other social ailments.
About 300,000 children in Scotland now live in poverty. And many disabled people as well as about 20 per cent of our pensioners are living in poverty, finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.
The likelihood is that the fallout from the current pandemic crisis will make this dire situation even worse. Meantime, the millionaires at the other end of the income spectrum are getting richer by the day.
This is not acceptable. We cannot allow so many of our people to be deprived of a decent standard of living, especially when we are living in one of the richest societies in the world.
The overriding priority for every politician in our country must be to tackle poverty at its roots and pursue policies, which aim to eliminate poverty once and for all.