Being Poor Is Bad For Your Health -- Or Maybe Being In Poor Health Makes You Poor

     From The Guardian:

... [O]ver a 10-year period, Americans aged 54 to 64 who were in the lowest wealth bracket (with financial holdings of $39,000 or less) faced a 48 percent risk for developing a disability and 17 percent risk for dying prematurely, the investigators found.   

By comparison, their peers in the highest bracket (with holdings equaling $560,000 or more) had a 15 percent disability risk and 5 percent premature death risk. 

The fact that people in England are guaranteed cradle-to-grave government-run health care coverage, while Americans are not, did not seem to have much effect. 

The study was published online October 23 in JAMA Internal Medicine.”We saw similar relationships in both the United States and England, which are two countries with very different health and social safety-net systems,” explained Dr. Lena Makaroun, the study’s lead author. ... 

Disability status was assessed on the basis of whether participants could, on their own, get dressed, bathe, eat, get in and out of bed, and use the bathroom. ...