Spotlight on Research: Exploring the Health Impacts of Austerity

Spending approaches of governments both current and historically have implications and repercussions for population health outcomes. The approach of spending within is constructed through a complex and multi-faceted policy environment underpinned and shaped by many factors: economic context, ideological underpinnings, wider policy ideas and discourses well as the historical landscape from previous spending choices.

The UK Government has recently set out plans to reduce government spending across departments, including expenditure on social security. For some of the reforms, the impact on people in Scotland will be felt directly, but in others, the Scottish Government will have to make choices on where spending cuts will fall.

A SHERU response provides more detail on these emerging reforms. This Spotlight on Research provides an overview of what available evidence tells us about the impact of spending cuts on health inequalities. It draws on a considerable body of research exploring health impacts emanating from a period of spending cuts implemented in the UK and many other countries during the 2010’s, a period often associated with ‘austerity’.