---
title: "Zemiology"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zemiology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:10.811479+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

It is estimated by the Low Pay Commission that 146,000–219,000 workers are not receiving the wage they are legally entitled too. It has been suggested that the reasons for relate to the limited resources available to the Inland Revenue Enforcement Teams. The Inland Revenue Enforcement Team consists of 16 compliance teams, each with 3 to 8 officers, based in fourteen towns and cities throughout the UK. In 1999 there were 115 Inspectors which meant that a workplace could expect to be inspected once every 30 years.

=== Policy responses to inequality ===
Inequality has grown in countries like the UK since the beginning of the 1980s. It is argued that this growth in inequality has had a series of deleterious and harmful effects. These include children's life chances, mental health, physical health, crime and social well-being. Using the example of physical, numerous studies have demonstrated that those from lower socio economic classes have lower life expectancy. For instance a recent research study that investigated differences in health in the 678 electoral wards of the northern region of England found that death rates were four times as high in the poorest 10 per cent of wards as they were in the richest 10 per cent. In the 1980s more and more households fell into poverty and by the early 1990s one in three children lived below the poverty line.
Inequality is a harm that is perceived as an inherent and largely unpreventable feature of our society. Yet a number of academics attribute the current levels of inequality in the UK to a series of policy decisions that have been made over the last 30 years. The reasons for the growing levels of inequality are numerous. The poorest groups in society have seen their income and wealth affected by developments such as the decreasing value of benefits in real terms, the deregulation of labour markets etc., whilst the rich have seen their wealth grow primarily as a result of the changes made in the UK tax system since 1979. In particular, the top rate of income tax was cut by the Thatcher government in the first post-1979 election budget from 83% to 60%. Then it was cut to 40%. Moreover, tax havens have increased and become common place which has enabled wealthy individuals and companies to avoid taxation regimes. In fact, tax consultants Grant Thornton estimated that the UK's 54 billionaires paid income tax of only £14.7 million in 2006. At least 32 paid no income tax at all. In contrast, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, £3.4 billion a year would lift enough families out of poverty to hit Labour's pledge of halving child poverty by 2010.

=== Regulating environmental harm ===
It is estimated that 24,000 lives are prematurely ended due to the effects of air pollution. Moreover, these health consequences are estimated to cost the UK £29,000 per life year lost in "good" health, £15,000 per life year lost in "poor" health and £1,900–£2,000 per hospital admission. Given the harm caused by air pollution the UK has a poor record in responding to air pollution. The European Union is currently considering prosecuting the British government for breaching air pollution laws. Air pollution near in a number of locations has been recorded at twice the UN's World Health Organization maximum recommended level, which has consequently infringed EU air quality laws. Moreover, the Environment Agency, the UK's principal environmental regulator, has what some may consider to be a poor record of prosecuting infringements of environmental standards. For example, there were 29,627 "substantiated" pollution incidents in 2003, of which 1,337 were considered serious by the agency. However, in the same year the agency prosecuted 266 companies, 61 resulted in fines over £10,000. The average fine for companies was £8,412, down from £8,622 in 2002. There are approximately 20,000 incidents each year in the UK and around 250 prosecutions, which means there is a one in eighty chance of company being prosecuted for these incidents.

=== Regulating health and safety at work ===
Large numbers of people each year lose their lives due to injuries and diseases that result from their work. In 2007–08, 229 workers were killed at work, whilst 136,771 other injuries to employees were reported under RIDDOR and 299,000 reportable injuries occurred, according to the Labour Force Survey. In addition, 2.1 million people were suffering from an illness they believed was caused or made worse by their current or past work. It is believed that 2056 people died of asbestos related diseases contracted through their work activities. Despite these large scale harms, the principal regulatory in the UK, the Health and Safety Executive, has faced continuing cuts, most notably the 2006 £5.6M reduction in the HSE budget. This has had major implications for the ability of the HSE to regulate workplaces with a decreasing numbers of regulatory contacts. A recent TUC report argued that: Around 85 per cent of major injuries reported to HSE are never investigated ... there is only so much that the 500 or so inspectors in HSE's Field Operations Division (FOD) can achieve. This means that very serious career-ending accidents go unpunished simply because there is no one to gather the evidence. The number of prosecutions is now half what it was in the early 1990s – this simply means that more employers are getting away with it, not that they are more compliant.

== See also ==
Structural violence

== References ==