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What will the cost of living crisis do to our health?

Science Weekly Series

Millions around the world are struggling with higher food and energy prices. In the UK inflation has reached a 40-year high of 9% in the 12 months to April, leaving many struggling to pay bills and shoulder normal living costs. When the weekly shop gets smaller and the flat gets colder, it’s our health that suffers.

Madeleine Finlay speaks to health inequity expert Prof Michael Marmot about the ways poverty makes you sicker and why falling income is so bad for the country’s health. This cost of living crisis could be “austerity squared”, he warns.

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Presented and produced by , sound design by , and the executive producers were and

  • Michael Marmot is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Institute of Health Equity at University College London
  • You can read Michael Marmot’s opinion piece on the health impacts of the cost of living crisis here
  • Science Weekly host Ian Sample is on our sister podcast Today in Focus exploring the current outbreak of monkeypox in the UK
  • Let us know what you think of the episode, and tell us about any stories you would like us to cover in the future. Email us at [email protected]
Image shows a woman, Caroline, and her young son Joshua at Eastmoor Community Project at a community pantry or food bank in Wakefield, England
Photograph: Horst Friedrichs/Alamy
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