LSE Health is pleased to invite you to a timely and thought-provoking webinar titled "Unhealthy Divides? Perspectives on Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health."
Social inequalities in health are deep-rooted, persistent, and profoundly consequential. From differences in life expectancy to unequal access to care and preventative services, the health outcomes of individuals are strongly shaped by their socio-economic status, geographic location, race, gender, and other social determinants. While decades of research have documented these disparities, many questions remain. What are the fundamental drivers of health inequalities? How do these disparities evolve over an individual’s life course? How are they influenced - or exacerbated - by social policies, economic conditions, or political institutions? And how can we effectively measure progress in reducing them? In this webinar, an interdisciplinary panel of experts will explore these pressing questions, offering fresh perspectives and presenting the latest research from the fields of economics, demography, and political science. Together, they will examine the complex interplay between social structures and health outcomes and discuss potential pathways toward a more equitable health landscape. Join us for an engaging discussion that promises to deepen understanding and spark new ideas for research, policy, and practice.
Meet our speakers
Maarten Lindeboom is Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics at VU University Amsterdam and the Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, Melbourne Australia. He is also a member of the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy. He is a research fellow of the Tinbergen Institute, IZA and a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. He is an emeritus editor of the Journal of Health Economics, holds various positions in advisory boards of international research institutes and held longer term visiting positions at the University of Michigan and the University of Bristol. His research interests are in the field of Health, Labor and Demography, in particular issues related to early life conditions, human capital formation and later life health outcomes; Health, Income and Work across the life cycle; Mental Health and Economic Decision Making. Among others he has published in leading journals such as American Economic Review; the Journal of Economic Perspectives; Review of Economics and Statistics; Journal of the European Economic Association; the Economic Journal; Journal of Labor Economics; Journal of Human Resources; Demography; Journal of Public Economics; Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B.
Julia Lynch is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research concerns the politics of inequality and social policy in comparative perspective, mainly in Europe and North America.
Jennifer Dowd is Professor of Demography and Population Health at the University of Oxford and Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science. She earned her PhD in Economics and Demography from Princeton University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan in the Department of Epidemiology. Jenn's research examines how social and biological processes interact over the life course and how social factors “get under the skin” to impact health. She has studied how socioeconomic status shapes immune function and risk of infections as well as links between infections and chronic diseases of ageing. In her current 5-year Consolidator grant from the European Research Council (ERC), she is exploring reasons underlying stalling life expectancy in the US, UK and Europe. Jenn is also a founding member of an all-female team of PhD health scientists interpreting and curating COVID-19 and general health information for a general audience at Dear Pandemic.
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