Long-Term Limiting Illness in the United Kingdom: Before and After the
Covid Lockdown
Abstract
There is a sizeable body of scholarship on health inequalities and
morality. What is less well covered in the literature is research which
considers health inequalities and morbidity. This article specifically
examines the issue of long-term illness (LTI) in the United Kingdom,
which may or may not limit people’s daily activities and the work they
are able to do. It poses the research question, was the propensity of
LTI aggravated by the Covid pandemic? The evidence suggests that
existing health inequalities associated with LTI have worsened since the
pandemic. Using a multinomial logit model, the paper then computes the
probability of working-age respondents to the UK-LFS having a long-term
illness and, if they do, further computing the probability of this
illness being limiting in either moderate or severe form. Following
this, the paper computes the likelihood of a person with a LTLI having
various health conditions. Lastly, the paper compares the probabilities
of persons having a LTLI between 2019 and 2022 and tests whether the
pandemic significantly altered these probabilities both in aggregate and
for the narrower categories of population subgroups.