ArticleBMC public health2021
Pessimistic health and optimistic wealth distributions perceptions in Germany and the UK: evidence from an online-survey.
Article in BMC public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Public perceptions of health and economic impacts during COVID-19: Findings from a repeated cross-national survey in the US, UK and Germany (2020-2022).BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Perceived health inequalities: are the UK and US public aware of occupation-related health inequality, and do they wish to see it reduced?BMC public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundInequalities in health and wealth distributions are becoming pressing societal problems in many countries. How these inequalities are perceived and to what degree perceptions are aligned with actual distributions, is important for trust in public health services, social and economic policies, and policymakers. This study aims to assess perceived and desired levels of inequality in health and wealth in Germany and the UK.
methodsThe online-survey was filled out by 769 volunteers (322 from Germany, 447 from the UK), recruited from an existing commercial panel (Prolific Academic) or via Facebook advertisements in 2019. Perceived and ideal national health and wealth distributions were assessed and compared to actual health indicators (i.e. days absent from work, number of visits to general practitioners (GPs) and self-rated health), and actual wealth distributions with t-tests.
resultsA pronounced gap emerged between the estimated, ideal and actual inequality. Both samples strikingly underestimated the proportion of (very) good health in the national distribution by a factor of ~ 2.3 (participants estimated that 34% of the German and 36% of the UK population respectively are very healthy or healthy, while the actual proportion in the population was 75% in Germany and 84% in the UK, P < 0.001 for all). Moreover, actual health distributions were much closer to the desired than the perceived health distributions (78% of German and 72% of UK participants ideally being very healthy or healthy). A reversed pattern of results emerged for wealth in both samples, with wealth inequality being strikingly worse than desired and inequality being underestimated by a factor ~ 1.7 (P < 0.001 for all). Results were consistent across demographic groups.
conclusionsRespondents in both Germany and the UK have profoundly negative misperceptions regarding the distribution of health, which contrasts with starkly positive misperceptions regarding the distribution of wealth, indicating that the public is healthier but poorer than they think. More importantly, from a public health perspective, a high level of consensus emerged, with both healthy and wealthy participants misperceiving health and wealth distributions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.