This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Australians living in disadvantaged parts of the country are twice as likely to die from diabetes factors as those in the wealthiest areas, according to new research that also suggests health inequality among men suffering heart attacks has worsened over the past decade.

A study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, released on Thursday, examined how a person’s socioeconomic position impacted their chances of developing or dying from diabetes, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease.

Overall, researchers said the findings showed social disadvantage was linked to poorer outcomes, including higher rates of disease and a greater likelihood of dying.

In fact, if all Australians had the same chance of dying from the three diseases as those in the highest socioeconomic group, the report said there would be 8,600 fewer deaths each year from cardiovascular disease, 6,900 fewer deaths from diabetes, and 4,800 fewer deaths from chronic kidney disease.

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“Across the three chronic diseases we looked at … we saw that people in the lowest of the five socioeconomic groups had, on average, higher rates of these diseases than those in the highest socioeconomic groups,” an AIHW spokeswoman, Lynelle Moon, said in a statement.

The report compared incidence rates between the highest and lowest socio-economic areas, citing the difference as a ratio that expressed how unequal health outcomes were.

The diabetes death rate for women in the most disadvantaged areas was 2.39 times as high as those in the highest socio-economic areas. For men, the same ratio was 2.18 times.

In terms of mortality, the inequality of outcomes were less pronounced for cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease. Those from poorer areas were about 1.5 times as likely to die from those conditions as their wealthy counterparts.

The report also provided the same comparison when accounting for a person’s level of education or housing situation.

For example, women over 25 living in rental properties were 1.5 times as likely to die from kidney disease as those who owned their homes. Men without a tertiary education, meanwhile, were 2.42 times as likely to die from cardiovascular disease as those who went to university.

In some cases, the gap in health outcomes have worsened. “(Cardiovascular disease) death rates have declined for both males and females in all socioeconomic areas since 2001– however there have been greater falls for males in higher socioeconomic areas, and as a result, inequalities in male CVD death rates have grown,” the report said.

More broadly, people living in the most economically depressed areas were also more likely to develop the three conditions that were analysed by researchers, just as they were more likely to die from them.

Men aged over 25 were about 1.5 times as likely to have a heart attack if they lived in the lowest socioeconomic areas, as compared to the most advantaged parts of the country.

The ratios were similar again for people treated with end-stage kidney disease.