Climate change could leave children worse off than parents – Sir Michael Marmot

The leading epidemiologist was speaking at the British Medical Association’s annual representative meeting in Liverpool.

Sir Michael Marmot is a professor of epidemiology at University College London (UCL Institute of Health Equity) (PA Media)

Children today could be left worse off than their parents if issues such as climate change are not tackled, according to prominent epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot, who also said taxes should be raised to tackle health inequality in the UK.

Sir Michael, who is a professor of epidemiology at University College London (UCL) and director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, was speaking about health inequality at the British Medical Association’s (BMA’s) annual representative meeting in Liverpool.

He told the PA news agency there is a risk of children today being left “worse off or not better off” than their parents and said there are “two major components” to tackling widening health inequality in the UK, the first being climate change.

“Our children will be worse off than us if we burn up the planet. It’s going to be terrible. So the urgency – not just today, yesterday – in dealing with the climate crisis is key to everything we talk about.”

Sir Michael also said child poverty is an issue, referencing a study of the height of five-year-olds which was published last month.

When you see trends over time and differences among groups, that's likely to be childhood nutrition, infections, poverty, stress, all of those things that we know influence growth in children

The research looked at data from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration and found British five-year-olds were 7cm shorter than children of the same age in Europe.

He added: “Given that, I think, that height of individuals is determined by who their parents were, by their genes, but when you see trends over time and differences among groups, that’s likely to be childhood nutrition, infections, poverty, stress, all of those things that we know influence growth in children.”

In 1985, British five-year-olds were ranked 69th out of 200 countries in terms of height. In 2019, boys were ranked 102nd while girls were 96th.

Sir Michael said: “Is that saying we’re uniquely bad for conditions in children? Well, we’re not very good.”

He suggested raising taxes could help combat health inequality: “If you look at the tax level in the UK – the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) figures – our tax level is about 34% of GDP.

“The average for the EU 14 is 40%. And we say we can’t afford to reduce child poverty. We can’t afford to subsidise childcare.

“We’ve got I think the second most expensive childcare costs in Europe because we don’t subsidise it. And so poor families – it’s usually mothers – can’t go out to work because they can’t afford childcare.

“Going way back to when I did the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, our Nordic colleagues had evidence that one of the reasons for the low child poverty rates in the Nordic countries is both parents can work. And the reason both parents can work is because childcare subsidised, it’s affordable.”

Sir Michael’s comments come after he gave evidence at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry last month.

We said at the beginning of the pandemic, that it would expose the underlying inequalities in society and amplify them. And that's what we saw.

The first module of the probe is exploring the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic and a report prepared jointly by Sir Michael and Prof Clare Bambra, an expert in public health from Newcastle University, said austerity policies affected the health of the nation in the lead up to the virus’ outbreak.

He added: “I did a report in February 2020, just before the pandemic, showing that the rate of improvement in life expectancy had slowed dramatically. The inequalities have got bigger, and life expectancy for the poorest people was going down.

“If you classify people by where they live by level of deprivation, it’s a gradient; the greater the deprivation than the life expectancy.

“We said at the beginning of the pandemic, that it would expose the underlying inequalities in society and amplify them. And that’s what we saw – a bigger fall in life expectancy in the deprived North West than in the country as a whole.”