SOCIAL GROUPS AND RATES OF ILL HEALTH

Why might different social groups suffer different rates of ill health?

Why might different social groups suffer different rates of ill health?

Introduction

The concept of social capital is vague but it is very useful to understand how social networks work. Social capital is not only related to immigrant social networks, but has been widely used to explain how communities function and how social organization depends on trust, norms and networks. Inclusively, the World Bank defines social capital as norms and networks that enable collective action which contribute to poverty alleviation. In sum, in contemporary discourse, “social capital is used to describe the web of connections, loyalties, investment, and mutual obligations that develop among people, both as part of their regular interactions in which intragroup connections are strengthened (bonding capital) and new links are forged and exploited (bridging capital). Additionally, social capital also includes a sense of commitment that lead people to “extend favours, expect preferential treatment and look out for one another's interests.

Analysis

The question of how to improve the life of deprived people begins with identifying them in the different countries - whereas in some cases we have a poor segment of the population that doesn't differ in any other characteristic except for its scarce financial resources, and no other problem hinders its development, it needs a treatment and social policy solutions different from a completely secluded ethnic minority that has to overcome several different problems that combine to make its situation worse/worsen. The idea of individual treatment of a country seems important if we want to understand and help deprived people. Even if some common measures in the framework of EU regulation should be applied to all of our countries, we have concluded that we need to address our problems in a particular way according to what we know about our own one.

Minorities are important problem European countries have at present - finding out how to cope with the degrading living conditions and the precarious situation of groups not fitting in the society is the issue on the social and political agenda of our countries. Heterogeneous societies are quite difficult to deal with in some cases, such as countries that have a secluded minority or one that has a low standard of living compared to the majority. Across Europe, we find different patterns of situation of the minorities but what is common of their situation is that the reason behind their problems is the lack of integration and the attitude of the surrounding population. (That being said, the best way to address the problem is by targeting the way people think.) When a group of people has one of the characteristics of a deprived community, it is easy for other problems to add to the first Poverty leads easily to seclusion, to a stigmatizing attitude and to people's belief that they are not worth taking equal part in society. That brings about an increase in desperate or aggressive acts of on behalf of those who feel doomed to ...