Article Text
PDF
Statistics from Altmetric.com
‘Austerity’ is a word that is bandied about, with different meanings in different contexts. In the world of economic and social policymaking, it is used to characterise political choices made in the aftermath of the global financial crash of 2007–2008: governmental responses to the vast sums of money spent on ‘bailing out the banks’ which sought to reduce government deficits and increase growth and private sector activity.1
A different ‘viewpoint’ article in a different type of journal could debate the extent to which such policies were economically necessary (or successful), or whether they instead represented ideological opportunism.1 But regardless of motivation, what matters from a social and epidemiological perspective is that the implementation of austerity policies in the UK has profoundly damaged the very society in which we live, and the health—and, as we will discuss, the future health—of our population.2 3
While different versions of austerity were implemented in different countries, in the UK the focus was on enormous reductions to public spending. This was manifested in two principal ways: cuts to social security, thereby impacting on the income of the poorest and most vulnerable; and cuts to local government funding, thereby impacting on vital services on which people—especially those with the greatest needs—rely. In addition, funding of the NHS did not keep pace with increased demand, leading to current, well-documented service pressures.
The scale of the cuts to social security and local government funding has been extraordinary: estimates vary, but one analysis has suggested that by 2019, annual government spending was around £90 billion less than it had been pre-2010 (the year the austerity programme was first introduced in the UK by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government). This includes tens of billions of pounds cut every year from the social …
Footnotes
Contributors DW drafted the manuscript. GM provided substantial critical input to improve the manuscript and all authors approved the final draft. DW is the guarantor.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.