The reasons for the high Scottish mortality between 1950 and 1980 are unclear, but poverty and deprivation linked to particular industrial employment patterns, poor housing and unhealthy cultural and behavioural patterns seem the more likely explanations. From 1980 onwards the mortality pattern changed and this seems most likely to be attributable to the changed political context, produced by neoliberal political attack, and the consequent hopelessness and community disruption experienced in Scotland and Glasgow.
A controversial new report (1.9mb) from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health suggests that policies from the Conservative Government in the 1980s, aimed at deliberately weakening Scotland’s indiustrial heartland, may have led to the “Glasgow Effect”. This may explain, they suggest, why people in the West of Scotland live less long than those of other comparable cities.
On the other hand, maybe the real cause of the “Glasgow Effect” is blaming other people for our woes…
In the 1980s and 90s, thousands of Glaswegians were declared “unfit” for work, to remove them from the unemployment statistics. Surely this must have had a major effect on how our city and inhabitants see ourselves… Officially incapable :(
(ht: Glasgow Guide)
