Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality [Hardcover] Author: Richard G. Wilkinson | Language: English | ISBN:
0415092345 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Among the developed countries it is not the richest societies which have the best health, but those which have the smallest income differences between rich and poor. Inequality and relative poverty have absolute effects: they increase death rates. But why? How can smaller income differences raise average life expectancy?
Using examples from the USA, Britain, Japan and Eastern Europe, and bringing together evidence from the social and medical sciences, Unhealthy Socities provides the explanation. Healthy, egalitarian societies are more socially cohesive. They have a stronger community life and suffer fewer of the corrosive effects of inequality. As well as inequality weakening the social fabric, damaging health and increasing crime rates, Unhealthy Societies shows that social cohesion is crucial to the quality of life.
The contrast between the material success and social failure of modern societies marks an imbalance which needs attention. The relationship between health and equality suggests that important social needs will go unmet without a larger measure of social and distributive justice. This path-breaking book is essential reading for health psychologists, sociologists, welfare economists, social policy analysts and all those concerned with the future of developed societies.
Direct download links available for Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality [Hardcover]
- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 19, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0415092345
- ISBN-13: 978-0415092340
- Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.1 x 8.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,391,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Unhealthy Societies - the new, new pediatrics
Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality, by Richard Wilkinson, is a clear, multifaceted description of research into the patterns of disease, violence, and death between and within societies.
Wilkinson reviews the global patterns of disease and death historically, where the trend is down. Countries which have attained a modest degree of affluence have gone through the `epidemiological transition' where the primary causes of death are no longer infectious, but the `diseases of affluence' the degenerative diseases He then reviews changes between societies, showing that some have large divergence in death rates as a function of income and that others do not. The difference is a function of the spread of income within the society. This pattern applies to the states of the US as well as among nations. . Above a certain level, the prime factors which determine health are relative, not absolute income.
He then cites data on the differences in death rates within societies as a function of income. For example, British civil servants in the lowest income categories have 4 times the rate of death from heart disease as those in the highest income categories. This pattern is shown to apply to homicides, and reading failure as well as a large number of medical conditions.
Another chapter deals with the level of cooperation in human societies in prehistory, versus the atomization and Hobbesian conflict, which is seen as normal and inevitable today. He also reviews studies which show that much of what we call human nature has been shown to be inference from our own behavior and is very sensitive to changes in situation.
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