PHA-Exchange> The Lancet Book Review: The Health of Nations

[Aviva]

> The Health of Nations: Why Inequality is Harmful to your Health
>
>
>
> Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce P Kennedy. New York: The New Press, 2002.
>
> The Lancet - Dissecting Room Section
> Volume 360, Number 9347 -  30 November 2002
>
>
> Book review at:
>
http://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.360.9347.dissecting_room.23361
> .1
>
> ".............With recommendations on this book's cover by Robert
Wilkinson,
> Amartya Sen, Katherine Newman, Alvin Tarlov, and Robert Putnam, The Health
> of Nations looks like a well orchestrated attack on those who defend
> inequalities in income because they are good for the economy. Harvard
> scholars Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce Kennedy have synthesised an enormous
> amount of evidence that suggests more inequality not only is bad for
health,
> but also may ultimately threaten all the freedoms that economic
development
> is meant to bring about.
>
> For many readers of The Lancet, their conclusion that wider disparities in
> income lead to wider inequalities in health--and may even lead to higher
> average levels of ill-health because of the curvilinear effect of income
on
> health--will not come as a surprise. What Kawachi and Kennedy add to this
> story, however, is a provocative analysis of all the other harmful effects
> of income inequalities. They argue that income inequality, contrary to
> popular belief, does not promote economic development but fosters certain
> dysfunctional factors, such as social exclusion, that may threaten
economic
> growth........"
>