College homework, completely stressing; help me out here.

[ComeTurismO]

Alright, so I'm a high school student trying out college part of this Co-operative education dual credit program. I'm in this course where I don't understand something.
So we had to watch this one hour movie called "Unnatural Causes: in sickness and in wealth", I have a transcript of it, and one of the questions I need to answer, which would be on my exam is asking me "what is the wealth-health gradient"

What do you guys think this is? Before this question was introduced, I was given a statement saying that a study revealed that people with less wealth have higher chances of heart disease. Is this pretty much the same thing? what do you think?

I'm so stressed, help me out.

You guys are my only way Lol!

 

[Neru]

I'm in high school as well, and my AP ELA teacher is making me type a 3 page essay about what type of food I am lol. But your HW sounds way harder than mines

 

[FAST6191]

It is pretty much as it sounds -- plot some measure of health against effective wealth of a person and broadly speaking you will probably see a trend. Incidence rates of heart disease would be an example of it but not the whole story.

Is this an essay type question or just a one shot type thing?

For an essay you might wish to discuss the various metrics you might use -- is total lifetime against wealth a useful thing? What about life time from diagnosis/percentage alive at X years? Percentage diagnosis among groups -- it is well documented that a poor diet and/or smoking will mess you up, guess which things are more common among the poorer members of society these days? I mentioned lifetime before, this is not bad but quality of life is better (you can be kept ticking for a while but if you are not able to do much other than tick along then is it worth it)? Likewise they say life in the middle ages was short and brutal and have stats like average age was low 30s or something, this is fine until you consider that those that actually made it to 20 saw a decent chance of then making 50 or 60 -- high infant mortality does rather skew averages.
You might also wish to consider what goes for countries with free or effectively free healthcare. Hospital stays are very expensive, here is costs me nothing except lost wages (and possibly not even that) but if I did not have insurance in the US of 10 years ago I would be screwed, similarly I saw many in the US living with fairly crippling illnesses because they might not be able to afford treatment or even diagnosis ("oh he is just a bit ill" can very quickly become "oh he has been confirmed to have something nasty, good thing he has now has no job so he can focus on getting better"). Has this cheap and mandatory health insurance lark in the US changed anything or is it too early to tell?
Is there a drop off after a point for effective wealth? If I can afford to eat right and buy some decent insurance without too much hassle then does it matter if I am just in the low end of the higher tax bracket or have a far higher income? At the same time you never meet an old/retired bank manager.
Consider somewhere like China or India. In my lifetime their wealth has increased dramatically, there are a few nice ted talks showing what went with average lifetime. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty would be one of the
Do kids change anything? It costs a fortune to raise a kid, let alone multiple ones, and doing as such will reduce your effective wealth. Or does it provide some incentive to not be a fat bastard and take better care of yourself?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11360819/Average-cost-of-raising-a-child-in-UK-230000.html
http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/18/pf/child-cost/
US and UK there, in both cases the cost of a child is about that of purchasing a house and typically done over a similar period of time. Or if you prefer then done over the 20 years then if you earn 40K then two kids might well half that. 40K in the UK is a very respectable wage as well, lower income type wages tend to be 25K or somewhat lower (full time minimum wage https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates gets you around £14000 a year).
Even within the same country what buys me a shorter lease on a one bedroom flat in London buys me a mansion in rural Yorkshire. Do you wish to account for this in your measure of effective wealth?

and because I feel nice here is a very nice source you can use for this
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index1.html

The following youtube channel has some good stuff as well, not all of it is relevant to what you want but a lot of it is
https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage/videos

 

[link6155]

I remember when I first got into college. The truth is your first semester will be absolute hell. A lot of people will tell you college = freedom, but that's not the case. There are things that you have more control over, but at the same time there's a lot more responsibility and weight on your shoulders.

Take advantage of whatever sources you can find! You probably know that many colleges will offer private tutors, but those can be expensive. However, many colleges also offer open study sessions where you meet up with a tutor at a specific time with other people to study. This is what got me through my first semester, probably would have died otherwise >.<

If your school doesn't offer that, try to make acquaintances with other people in your class. It helps to know people that you can study or get help from. The overall tip I'm giving is that you need to be social in college to survive. While being a bookworm in high school can easily get you to graduation, you can't do the same in college due to the pace and lack of support from your instructor.

 

[loco365]

If I had to answer that question myself, I'd take the time to explain the health-wealth gradient, but I'd also be taking an analytical look at the USA healthcare system pre-Obamacare and mentioning how only those that have money can afford to keep themselves healthy - Micheal Moore's film Sicko has plenty of great examples of this, right from the start even - and taking all of that into account in my explanation.

The example you provided is exactly that - people that have the money can afford:

1. Better food that isn't junk (Such as a $2 burger vs a $7 salad at McDonalds)
2. Access to [better] medicines to keep any illnesses down or at bay

One of the first examples Micheal Moore explains in Sicko involves a man who ended up losing two fingers to a piece of wood that went through a table saw too fast. One could cost him just short of $20,000, while the other could have cost him almost $90,000. He could have opted to not have either finger reattached, or pick the lesser of the two evils and have to take out a loan equivalent to one or two small vehicles, or else take out a loan equivalent to most luxury vehicles and have the other finger reattached. This correlates with the statement that was given from your teacher very clearly, so perhaps this is a good way of explaining it.

As well, fwiw, I have three chem assignments and two calculus assignments due at different times this week, a good portion of them tomorrow.

 

[Hells Malice]

What a pretentious question. I wonder if it's an English thing to use words that only vaguely describe what the person is actually trying to say in an attempt to sound intelligent. I notice it quite a bit but have no idea if other languages do it.

Anyway what exactly about it is confusing? The question itself? Cuz in simple terms it just sounds like the wealth-health gradient would be how much wealth affects health. The 'gradient' being the slope on a graph for just how much wealth influences better health.

 

[ComeTurismO]

You all are right, I guess. Fast6191 gave me so much points; I'll do great on my journal essay. It turns out that the movie I watched was pretty much defining it all over. The wealth-health gradient is pretty much that the more wealth you have, the more health you have. And the less wealth you have, the less health you have.