Urban children have better access to health care than children living in the countryside.
- Children in rural areas are further away from healthcare professionals, and especially specialists.
Children in rural areas are further away from health professionals than those who live in cities, according to a new study by Drees. In mainland France, 4.2 million children under the age of 18, i.e. nearly one child in three, live in a so-called “rural”.
In 2019, according to the permanent equipment database of INSEE, children in rural areas are further away from health professionals, and in particular specialists. If urban children live in a municipality located on average less than 10 minutes by car from health professionals, rural children live on average 20 minutes by car from an ophthalmologist and 25 minutes from a paediatrician.
Life expectancy gaps
However, rural children have more access to green spaces, which are excellent for their health. In rural municipalities, nine out of ten children live in a single-family house with a private outdoor space (garden, land, courtyard), compared to one in two in urban areas.
Differences in living conditions that are found among adults, for whom the gaps in life expectancy have worsened over the past thirty years between rural departments and urban departments, according to another study conducted by the Association of Rural Mayors de France (AMRF) and the Macif group, in partnership with France Bleu, published on Wednesday 16 December. Concretely, the inhabitants of rural areas live two years less than those of cities. More specifically: the inequality in life expectancy between rural and urban is 2.2 years for men, and 0.9 years for women.
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