Black Report

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The Black report was a 1980 document published by the Department of Health and Social Security (now the Department of Health) in the United Kingdom, which was the report of the expert committee into health inequality chaired by Sir Douglas Black. It was fundamental in demonstrating that although overall health had improved since the introduction of the welfare state, there were widespread health inequalities. It also found that the main cause of these inequalities was poverty, and that to attack these inequalities, the gap between upper class and lower class peoples must be narrowed.

The Black report was commissioned in the late 1970s by the Labour Party. However it was not published until the 1980s during a Conservative Government. The Black report was a suppressed report with only 260 copies printed. The report stated that the death rate for men in social class V was twice that for men in social class I and that gap between the two was increasing not reducing as was expected. The Whitehead Report published in 1987 came to the same conclusions as the Black report, as did the Acheson report later in 1998.