Inequality is not only a gap in bank balances. It can be a gap of twenty years in good health. Trussell tells Steve’s story: an injury ended his work in event security. He needed food bank support. A health shock had become an income shock. Follow thirty years of official child-poverty figures. There are important breaks in who is counted and how, so we do not draw one unbroken before-and-after claim. In the latest figures, more than one in four children are below sixty percent of the middle household income, after housing costs and household size are allowed for. The lived-experience survey asks a different question. Among lower-income households, sixty-two percent said they had gone without an essential item in the last six months. That is not sixty-two percent of everybody in Britain. It is a survey of households in the lowest forty percent of incomes. Keeping the group clear matters. Now look at healthy life expectancy. In England’s most deprived areas, men can expect around fifty years in good health, compared with sixty-nine in the least deprived. For women, the figures are around forty-eight and sixty-nine years. These differences reflect overlapping conditions; they do not prove income alone caused them. Steve’s story shows one pathway. Poor health can make work harder. Losing income makes food, warmth and a secure home harder to afford. Those pressures can damage health too. So look beyond a national average: adequate income, prevention, affordable essentials and support after a shock. Then check whether fewer people actually go without. Explore who is affected and what could change at www dot uk-statpack dot co dot uk.