 It might be thought that the provision of universal access to a range of public health and personal medical services would go a long way toward reducing health inequalities among different social groups, whether ethnic or divided by socio-economic status. But, careful studies in many countries, most dramatically in the United Kingdom, have shown that health inequalities by class have not been reduced by the presence of universal coverage through the British National Health Service (Marmot 2004). Two longitudinal studies of British civil servants, known as the Whitehall Studies, have shown a pronounced socio-economic gradient of health across different categories of workers: the higher a worker’s occupational status, the longer and healthier her life. In addition, this difference is not explained by risk factors associated with occupational status, such as smoking rates or lipid levels or other “lifestyle choices.” Nor is the gradient simply a result of “deprivation”—for none of the civil servants are poor, lack basic education, or medical care—and the gradient is present across all occupational levels.