Pernicious impact of austerity
‘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
