Download or read book Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High Income Countries written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages-cancer and cardiovascular disease-available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which-unlike randomized controlled trials-are subject to many biases.

Download or read book High and Rising Mortality Rates Among Working Age Adults written by National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Relative Deprivation Inequality and Mortality written by Angus Deaton and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I present a model of mortality and income that integrates the 'gradient, ' the negative relationship between income and mortality, with the Wilkinson hypothesis, that income inequality poses a risk to health. Individual health is negatively affected by relative deprivation within a reference group, defined as the ratio to group mean income of the total 'weight' of incomes of group members better-off than the individual. I argue that such a model is consistent with what we know about the way in which social status affects health, based on both animal and human models. The theory predicts: (a) within reference groups, which may be as large as whole populations, mortality declines with income, but at a decreasing rate; the mortality to income relationship is monotone decreasing and convex. (b) If the upper tail of the income distribution is Pareto then, among the rich, there will be a negative liriear relationship between the logarithm of the probability of death and the logarithm of income, whose slope is larger the larger is Pareto's constant, itself often interpreted as a measure of equality. (c) A mean-preserving increase in the spread of incomes raises the risk of mortality for everyone. Between reference groups (e.g. states or countries) mortality is independent of the level of average income, but depends on the gini coefficient of income inequality, as does actual aggregate mortality across US states. Individual data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study show that the relative deprivation theory provides a good account of the mortality gradient within states, but actually fails to account for interstate correlation between mortality and income inequality. Further analysis of the aggregate data shows that the effect of income inequality is not robust to the inclusion of other controls, particularly the fraction of blacks in the population. The fraction black is positively associated with white (male) mortality in both the individual and aggregate data and, once the fraction black is controlled for, there is no effect of income inequality on either male or female mortality. No explanation is offered for why white mortality should be higher in states with a higher proportion of blacks in the population.

Download or read book Health and the Income Inequality Hypothesis written by Nick Eberstadt and published by American Enterprise Institute. This book was released on 2004 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few would take exception to the proposition that an improvement in the material well-being of the poor would enhance not only their living standards but their health as well. A number of influential recent studies, however, purport to show that inequality in income -- not poverty per se -- is bad for people's health. This "inequality hypothesis" is meant to apply to everyone, regardless of wealth or social standing, and predicts that the risk of illness depends upon whether one lives in a society that is stratified or egalitarian. Thus, according to this hypothesis, while the poor may suffer the most from inequality, the better off and even the rich suffer as well. The enthusiasm many researchers and observers feel for this theory goes well beyond what might be justified by the evidence. The inequality hypothesis too often relies upon limited or unrepresentative data, hazily expounded causality, elementary econometric fallacies, and results that cannot be replicated. A very persuasive (although less publicly heralded) body of scholarship that challenges the inequality hypothesis is currently emerging. For example, by controlling for relevant variables -- such as household income, maternal characteristics, education, and race -- the relationship between income inequality and the health of infants and adults diminishes or disappears completely. This strongly suggests that income distribution is far less powerful a determinant of population health than the inequality hypothesis holds. Book jacket.

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Download or read book The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. population is aging. Social Security projections suggest that between 2013 and 2050, the population aged 65 and over will almost double, from 45 million to 86 million. One key driver of population aging is ongoing increases in life expectancy. Average U.S. life expectancy was 67 years for males and 73 years for females five decades ago; the averages are now 76 and 81, respectively. It has long been the case that better-educated, higher-income people enjoy longer life expectancies than less-educated, lower-income people. The causes include early life conditions, behavioral factors (such as nutrition, exercise, and smoking behaviors), stress, and access to health care services, all of which can vary across education and income. Our major entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income - have come to deliver disproportionately larger lifetime benefits to higher-income people because, on average, they are increasingly collecting those benefits over more years than others. This report studies the impact the growing gap in life expectancy has on the present value of lifetime benefits that people with higher or lower earnings will receive from major entitlement programs. The analysis presented in The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income goes beyond an examination of the existing literature by providing the first comprehensive estimates of how lifetime benefits are affected by the changing distribution of life expectancy. The report also explores, from a lifetime benefit perspective, how the growing gap in longevity affects traditional policy analyses of reforms to the nation's leading entitlement programs. This in-depth analysis of the economic impacts of the longevity gap will inform debate and assist decision makers, economists, and researchers.

Download or read book New Horizons in Health written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-03-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Horizons in Health discusses how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) can integrate research in the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences to better understand the causes of disease as well as interventions that promote health. It outlines a set of research priorities for consideration by the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), with particular attention to research that can support and complement the work of the National Institutes of Health. By addressing the range of interactions among social settings, behavioral patterns, and important health concerns, it highlights areas of scientific opportunity where significant investment is most likely to improve nationalâ€"and globalâ€"health outcomes. These opportunities will apply the knowledge and methods of the behavioral and social sciences to contemporary health needs, and give attention to the chief health concerns of the general public.

Download or read book The Death Gap written by David A. Ansell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We hear plenty about the widening income gap between the rich and the poor in America and about the expanding distance separating the haves and the have-nots. But when detailing the many things that the poor have not, we often overlook the most critical—their health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. In nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, David A. Ansell, MD, has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients. While the contrasts and disparities among Chicago’s communities are particularly stark, the death gap is truly a nationwide epidemic—as Ansell shows, there is a thirty-five-year difference in life expectancy between the healthiest and wealthiest and the poorest and sickest American neighborhoods. If you are poor, where you live in America can dictate when you die. It doesn’t need to be this way; such divisions are not inevitable. Ansell calls out the social and cultural arguments that have been raised as ways of explaining or excusing these gaps, and he lays bare the structural violence—the racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination—that is really to blame. Inequality is a disease, Ansell argues, and we need to treat and eradicate it as we would any major illness. To do so, he outlines a vision that will provide the foundation for a healthier nation—for all. Inequality is all around us, and often the distance between high and low life expectancy can be a matter of just a few blocks. But geography need not be destiny, urges Ansell. In The Death Gap he shows us how we can face this national health crisis head-on and take action against the circumstances that rob people of their dignity and their lives.

Download or read book Income Inequality and Mortality written by Sepideh Modrek and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades there has been much debate on the extent to which income inequality affects health outcomes. The majority of studies in this literature have examined the relationship between income distribution and health outcomes in the contexts of high-income nations. This dissertation evaluates both the ecological and individual-level relationship between income inequality and mortality in the context of a middle-income country, Costa Rica. The Costa Rican case is particularly interesting because its strong social safety net, political organization, and history limit the effects of income inequality on health through indirect channels. Using 20 years of household data, this study begins by documenting changes in income inequality at the canton level. These data reveal that on average inequality has been growing at an annual rate of 0.5%. Using these inequality data, Vital Statistics Mortality records, and longitudinal methods, this study next examines whether cantons with greater growth in inequality also experienced increasing mortality. The analyses indicate that there is no relationship between changes in income inequality and changes in all-cause mortality; however, a relationship does exist for specific causes of death. Area-level inequality was found to be associated with an increase in suicide mortality rates, and a decrease in cardiovascular, respiratory cancer, and breast cancer mortality rates. At the individual-level survival analysis was applied to a new census-mortality linked dataset that allows for a 20-year prospective follow-up. These individual level analyses also test whether income inequality disproportionately affects the poor. In the case of all-cause mortality, the results suggest that there is no association between income inequality and time to death for either the entire sample or for the poor. Contrary to expectations the magnitudes of the estimated effects indicate that residents living in areas with increasing income inequality had a survival advantage for cardiovascular mortality, which further confirms the results found at the ecological level. Overall, this study finds that while inequality has been increasing in Costa Rica, it had limited effect on mortality, indicating that in an environment where safety net services are available, the negative effects of income inequality may be limited to suicide mortality.

Download or read book Income Distribution in OECD Countries written by Anthony Barnes Atkinson and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gap between the incomes of rich and poor households excites debate for social, economic and political reasons. Policy reforms suggested to narrow gap. Luxembourg study.

Download or read book International Handbook of Health Expectancies written by Carol Jagger and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook presents global research on health expectancies, a measure of population health that examines the interaction between quantity and quality of life. With data from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond, it explains how to define and measure health and morbidity and how to integrate these measurements with mortality. Coverage first highlights long-term trends in longevity and health. It also considers variations across and within countries, inequalities, and social gaps as well as micro and macro-level determinants. Next, the handbook deals with the methodological aspects of calculating health expectancies. It compares results from different methods and introduces tools, such as decomposition tool for decomposing gaps, an attrition tool for attributing a medical cause to reported disability, and a tool for measuring policy impact on health expectancies. It introduces methods of forecasting health expectancies. The handbook then goes on to examine the synergies and/or trade-off between longevity and health as well as considers such topics as the compression versus the expansion of morbidity/disability and the health-survival paradox. The last section considers new concepts and dimensions of health and, more broadly, well being which can be used in summary measures of population health, including psychological factors. Researchers, clinicians, demographers, and health planners will find this handbook an essential resource to this increasingly important public health and social policy tool. It will help readers gain insight into changes in health over time as well as inequalities between countries, regions, and population subgroups.

Download or read book Unhealthy Societies written by Richard G. Wilkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book and author to be featured on Channel 4 Equinox series Author is well-known in his field internationally Breaks new ground by explaining the relationship between equality and health Argues that the amount of income equality in a society is a powerful determinant of its average life expectancy - controversial PUBLICITY TITLE

Download or read book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism written by Anne Case and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives. Anne Case and Angus Deaton explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. This critically important book paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline, and provides solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.

Download or read book Social Justice and Public Policy written by Anthony Barnes Atkinson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects the core of A. B. Atkinson's contributions to the study of inequality and mobility, wealth and redistribution, taxation, and public policy issues.

Download or read book Mortality Education Income and Inequality Among American Cohorts written by Angus Deaton and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People whose family income was less than $5,000 in 1980 could expect to live about 25 percent fewer years than people whose family income was greater than $50,000. We explore this finding using both individual data and a panel of aggregate birth cohorts observed from 1975 to 1995. We assume that health status is determined by social status, defined as income relative to the mean income of a reference group. When reference groups are not observed, health is a function of income whose slope (the gradient) depends on the ratio of within to between-group inequality. We derive results on how this relationship changes at different levels of aggregation. Our results on individuals show that income reduces the risk of death, and does so even controlling for education. Only some of the effect of income can plausibly be attributed to the reduction in earnings of those about to die. The panel of cohorts also shows a strongly protective effect of income, but there is evidence that cyclical increases in income may raise mortality, even when the long-run effects of income are in the opposite direction. There is no evidence that recent increases in inequality raised mortality beyond what it would otherwise have been.

Download or read book Income Inequality and Mortality written by Lisa Winters and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Social Capital and Health written by Ichiro Kawachi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As interest in social capital has grown over the past decade—particularly in public health —so has the lack of consensus on exactly what it is and what makes it worth studying. Ichiro Kawachi, a widely respected leader in the field, and 21 contributors (including physicians, economists, and public health experts) discuss the theoretical origins of social capital, the strengths and limitations of current methodologies of measuring it, and salient examples of social capital concepts informing public health practice. Among the highlights: Measurement methods: survey, sociometric, ethnographic, experimental The relationship between social capital and physical health and health behaviors: smoking, substance abuse, physical activity, sexual activity Social capital and mental health: early findings Social capital and the aging community Social capital and disaster preparedness Social Capital and Health is certain to inspire a new generation of research on this topic, and will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in public health, health behavior, and social epidemiology.