The data analyses we conducted confirmed our understanding from the research we've done, which is that lower income individuals tended to receive a lower-grade of of healthcare than higher-income individuals, in both quality and quantity. Higher income individuals have more doctors per capita, as well as receive more healthcare, which our analyses measure in terms of vaccinations.
These visualizations were constructed from the World Health Organization's global health observatory, which captures healthcare data world-wide.
This line graph constructed from the World Health Organization's global dataset displays the trend in children receiving vaccinations for Pneumonia. As seen by the legend, a much larger percentage of children from Upper-Middle and High-Income families have been vaccinated for Pneumonia. The world-wide trend in Pneumonia vaccinations since 2000 is generally positively increasing, and we can see Lower-Middle income group on a positive rise since 2020. The percent of Low-Income children vaccinated has been generally decreasing since the mid-2010s, demonstrating a widening gap between healthcare access for middle income groups.
This line chart illustrates the percentage of children that were vaccinated against tuberculosis from 2000 to 2020, in which they are categorized by different income groups. We can see that over this time period, children in the high or upper-middle income levels consistently have vaccination rates that are above 85%, withonly a slight dip around 2017-2019 for all income groups. Of note is that children from low-income families have the lowest vaccination rate of all time, as they have never once risen above or matched any other higher income group's vaccination rate, with the highest it has reached is 80%. While TB vaccination rates have generally improved overall as indicated from the line chart, low-income families still face challenges and disparity in maintaining a high and consistent vaccination coverage.
The line graph for the percent of children vaccinated for Measles closely mirrors the line graph for the Pneumonia vaccine. Again, the disparity between Low-Income and Lower-Middle-Income is widening beginning in the early 2010s. This points to a worldwide trend to a deepening inequality of access to vaccinations within the Lower-Income category.
From the above set of bar charts, we can observe the number of doctors, pharmacists, and nurses per 10,000 people that are categorized by income levels. We can clearly observe that the number of doctors available for service is the highest in high-income households, with upper-middle income coming in second. This is a common trait shared with both pharmacists and nurses as well. On the other hand, the class with the lowest amount of available staff are in the low-income households for all three medical personnel, with a steep difference in staff available when you compare high-income and low-income with one another. These charts highlight the extreme disparity in healthcare resources within the United States among people of different income brackets, which further cements the current issue of healthcare being unequal with a high barrier of access for those that are in need of treatments and medical help.
This line graph shows the percentage of the children population for each income group who have experienced stunted growth over time. Stunted growth includes children who are at least two standard deviations shorter than the expected height for their age group. There is a worldwide decline in this percentage overall, but the disparity between income groups still remains high; the difference in percentage in the 2020s between Low-Income and High-Income groups is around 35%.
The trend for adult underweight adults over time differed from others seen in our analysis. Historically the highest rates were seen in those in the lower middle income bracket until fairly recently. Percentages of adults who were underweight have decreased overtime for all income brackets with the exception of High-Income which had fairly low rates to begin with. The disparity between high and low income is lower than others seen in this project at around 17%
Unlike our other analyses, the worldwide percentages of adults who are obese has been steadily increasing for all income groups since 1990. The line graph shows an interesting contrast between the other line graphs in this section, because High-Income individuals are shown to be the most "unhealthy" for this category. These results may show the healthcare industry's lack of focus on preventative medicine, as High-Income individuals have the most access to doctors per capita but still struggle with maintaining certain markers of health such as a healthy weight.