Patrick Butler 

Affluent move up the ill-health table

They will, in time, surely be known as the affluent poor: young, two-car owning, Tory-voting families who own property in some of the wealthiest areas of England, and whose penchant for alcohol coupled with their time-poor, work-stressed lifestyles could trigger serious illness.
  
  


They will, in time, surely be known as the affluent poor: young, two-car owning, Tory-voting families who own property in some of the wealthiest areas of England, and whose penchant for alcohol coupled with their time-poor, work-stressed lifestyles could trigger serious illness.

Their household income is high, the value of their home is soaring, but their poor diet and habits may do for them what it does already for the inhabitants of Britain's poorest boroughs - put them in danger of obesity and heart disease.

New research identifies local authority areas with predictably high levels of serious illness (former mining areas), and those with unhealthy lifestyles that will lead to future serious illness (some inner London boroughs, Nottingham, Manchester), but pinpoints also boroughs that unexpectedly show signs of "potentially unhealthy lifestyle traits".

This category contains areas that have traditionally boasted high life expectancy and that, in economic terms, have benefited most from the property and City booms of the past decade.

Among them is Elmbridge, in Surrey (average house price pounds 510,000). It boasts the third highest average weekly earnings in the UK. But it also has a drink problem: significant numbers of its people come into the market research category labelled "affluent professionals, high alcohol consumption, dining out".

Other areas in this category, including Wokingham and Bracknell Forest in Berkshire (average house prices pounds 300,000 and pounds 250,000 respectively), have concentrations of young affluent families who consume high levels of processed and prepared food and sweets.

According to Ian Thurman, head of location analysis at CACI, which produced the report, it is when money does not matter (except to pay off a huge mortgage), when time is at a premium and jobs are stressful, that the health "problems of affluence" emerge.

The local authorities that enjoy good health with "few lifestyle issues" (including the Isles of Scilly, Ealing, and mid-Suffolk) are defined by less affluent middle-class people who live better. Among other things, says Thurman, they have more organic food stores.

www.caci.co.uk/acorn/healthacorn.asp

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