Admission of children to hospitals in Glasgow: relation to unemployment and other deprivation variables.

Children living in deprived districts in Glasgow were on average about nine times (five to over a hundred times) more likely to be admitted to hospital for any reason than children in non-deprived districts. The deprivation variables most strongly correlated with admission rates were overcrowding in households and parental unemployment; in comparison with these the protective effect of vaccination against measles and whooping cough, for example, was less significant. The findings show possibilities of an immense saving in avoidable illness and health service costs by elimination of recognisable disadvantages. But they suggest also the presence of a less recognisable life-style factor which may be responsible for a substantial health-damaging effect in some relatively non-deprived environments.