Lack of life chances an 'absolute calamity'

LEADING health expert has said there needs to be a push ‘to “create the life chances in Newcastle and Liverpool that presumably young people in London have”.

- SAM VOLPE

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, one of the UK’s leading experts on health inequality and a patron of Tyneside charity Healthworks, was speaking at an event held by the Kings Fund think tank last week.

The professor - who is director of the University College London Institute of Health Equity - said people should not feel they need to move to London for better life chances.

He added that it was an “absolute calamity” that a majority of parents now don’t think their children will be better off than they were.

He said: “Nineteen per cent of people think their children will be better off than them. Wow, that's a calamity.

“It's an absolute calamity - if you'd asked my parents’ generation: ‘Will your children be better off than you?’ they would have said: ‘Yes, of course.”