IT has been dubbed the "Scottish effect" – an unexplained factor which means those living north of the Border are more vulnerable to falling victim to life's big killers.

Now researchers have suggested the impact of Thatcherism on Scotland may have contributed to the country’s unenviable label as the “sick man of Europe”.

Poverty has long been cited as the reason for Scotland’s appalling record on health. However, in recent years that widely-held theory has been blown apart after evidence emerged there are hundreds of extra deaths a year among Scots from all social classes compared to cities with comparable levels of deprivation.

It has not always been that way – statistics suggest the “Scottish effect”, which is more prominent in the west of Scotland and Glasgow, only emerged during the 1980s.

The reasons why Scots are now more likely to be driven to an early grave compared to the rest of the UK, even when deprivation is taken into account, are unclear. However, Dr Chik Collins, senior lecturer in politics and sociology at the University of the West of Scotland, believes one potential explanation which has been overlooked until now is a “political attack” against the country’s working class, implemented by the UK Conservative Government from 1979.

A study outlining this hypothesis by Collins and public health consultant Gerry McCartney, has been published in the International Journal of Health Services.

Collins argues that although other de-industrialised areas in the UK such as Liverpool or Newcastle were just as exposed to the “neoliberal policies” the impact was far greater in Scotland.

“What we suggested was that Scotland was both more vulnerable and worse affected by the major early policy impacts of Thatcherism, most notably de-industrialisation, because of the greater reliance on heavy industry,” he told the Sunday Herald.

Collins said one clear example of the impact of neoliberal “shock treatment” was Russia in the years following the break-up of the Soviet Union from 1990. One epidemiologist described the sharp drop in male life expectancy which subsequently happened in the country as being “like war, but without war”.

“Obviously Scotland is nothing as intense as that, but nonetheless it is another case where a country was impacted by a kind of version of neoliberal shock treatment and has suffered adverse health consequences,” Collins said.

“In the case of Russia, the two things are seen to have been causally linked. But in the Scottish case there has been a slowness to make that connection.

“It is nicer to think perhaps that bad things that happen are not really traceable to political decisions, that somehow they happen through a force of nature or are somehow inevitable or unavoidable.”

A recent study found that between 2003 and 2007 there were 900 extra deaths a year in Glasgow compared to Manchester and Liverpool, even though the cities have almost identical levels of deprivation.

Further work is currently ongoing at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) to identify the reasons for this “Scottish effect”.

David Walsh, public health programme manager at GCPH, said it was likely to be due to a combination of varying factors.

“Although we are currently the sick man of Europe, as people like to call it, it has not always been that way,” he said.

Researchers from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health have outlined another 16 hypotheses which could explain the “Scottish effect”, which we outline on these pages.