Johan Mackenbach is Professor of Public Health at the Department of Public Health at the Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is also a Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science and the Academia Europaea. His research interests are in social epidemiology, medical demography and health policy. He has (co-)authored around 700 papers as well as a number of books. He is a former editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Public Health. Throughout his career, he has been actively engaged in exchanges between research and policy, among others, as a member of the Health Council and the Council for Public Health and Health Care, both of the Netherlands. He received a Doctorate Honoris Causa at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), and has been elected as a Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom.

• Chapter 1. Introduction


• More illness within shorter lives


• The great paradox of public health


• The need for a broader picture


• Preview: this book's main conclusions


• Chapter 2. Patterns of health inequalities


• Measurement issues


• Generalized, but uneven


• Persistent, but dynamic


• Ubiquitous, but variable


• Health inequalities outside Europe


• Chapter 3. Explanatory perspectives


• Methodological issues


• Education, occupation, income and health


• Six groups of contributing factors


• Theories about the explanation of health inequalities


• Chapter 4. Patterns of health inequalities explained


• Set-up of the analyses


• Changes in social stratification


• Rapid but differential health improvements


• Differential effects of factors driving population health change


• Continued social patterning of health determinants


• Understanding the European experience


• Chapter 5. A broader picture


• Why social inequality persists in modern welfare states


• Health inequalities and welfare state reform


• Health inequalities and social justice


• Chapter 6. Policy implications


• Proposals for tackling health inequalities


• National attempts at tackling health inequalities


• Realistic expectations


• Final reflections