Poverty, Inequities, Inequalities, and Social Protection

Poverty is one of the main drivers of health inequality and health inequity. While the objective measurement of poverty is complex, it colludes with other social determinants of health, such as access to services, education, and living conditions, to compound vulnerability, resulting in inequality and inequity, and negative health outcomes. The global outlook on poverty has improved over time, but inequality keeps increasing both across and within countries. The rising inequality is worsened by external shocks, such as COVID-19 and other recent crises. The main programme for mitigating the effects of poverty and inequality in health---social protection---is still globally inequitably distributed. This chapter describes global poverty, inequality and inequity and their effects on health and well-being. The chapter concludes with the evidence on social protection for health, and recent advances. Overall, social protection has great potential for improving health and well-being, but greater investments are still needed.