LET THERE be no doubt; political and economic decisions taken by those at the highest level in our society carry consequences for the physical health of individuals, especially those at the bottom of this chain.

This is beyond being a theory. And while there is undoubted stress among better-off Scots as they face tensions at work, long hours and pressures, this does not compare to the horrific, debilitating stress faced by those in the poorest section of our society, stresses which injure and kill.

It' s tough for middle class folks, but it it's a whole lot tougher for those foraging at food banks, struggling with zero hours contracts or juggling multiple minimum wage jobs.

We have known this for some time. Our former Chief Medical Officer, Sir Harry Burns, could not have been more explicit when he made the comparison to MSPs of the male life expectation of 82 in Lenzie and that of 54 just eight miles away in the East End of Glasgow.

"There is nothing intrinsically unhealthy about Scotland and the Scots," he said, citing instead the widening gulf between rich and poor. Now along comes fresh evidence from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

It concludes with a dreadful piece of jargon, which we will leave intact for the sake of accuracy: "Accelerated transmission of risk has been taking place as a direct consequence of austerity measures introduced post-2010."

The report is about "redistribution of social risk" - a technical term to explain a vile phenomenon, that while George Osborne has supposedly begun to balance his budget it was increasingly clear that we were "not in it together."

Social risk required by the bankers' follies or worse - the Financial Times suggest some may have continued to feed at the trough of public rescue funds - was never evenly spread across our society, and the consequences borne in relation to those who were to blame.

Herald readers will have suffered from this process. Our younger readers may have struggled to get a mortgage, our veterans facing the squeeze from zero interest rates, and the squeezed middle in between will have faced tough changes from pressure at work to competing demands at home.

It's been a rotten time, but for those at the bottom of the pile it has been ghastly, unimaginable. The Rowntree Foundation headline statement makes clear: "UK austerity measures impact adversely and more acutely on already disadvantaged groups and communities."

So when Sir Harry Burns told us that generations of unemployment, partial employment, uncertain hours, poverty and fear have literally killed generations of Scots, we now know that this is continuing.

The repeated phrase in the Rowntree report by Glasgow Caledonian University Researchers is "risk transfer" and "risk shift". The jargon disguises the specific: that welfare reform makes the poor poorer, and that the cumulative effect intensifies the problems.

With their jargon they make this sound like rocket science, but it's not. Risk transfer happens when public spending leads to cuts in local services, with welfare reform, with cumulative effects of these changes, and with the "deleterious impact of the risk shift on the most vulnerable groups in society."

This we already know. For our poorest, things and bad and worsening. Who is prepared to change this, to offer policies which will strike out differently? The political parties will not be falling over themselves to offer remedies in their Westminster manifestos, as these will carry price tags in the form of tax increases, but courage is required if the "risk shift to the most vulnerable" is to be reversed.