Political and Economic Determinants of Population Health and Well-Being: Controversies and Developments (Policy, Politics, Health, and Medicine Series)

The field of social inequalities in health continues its vigorous growth in the early years of the 21st century. This volume, following in the footsteps of Vicente Navarro?s edited collection The Political Economy of Social Inequalities, is a compilation of recent contributions to the areas of social epidemiology, health disparities, health economics, and health services research. The overarching theme is to describe and explain the ever-growing health inequalities across social class, race, and gender, as well as neighborhood, city, region, country, and continent. The approach of this book is distinctly multi-, trans-, and interdisciplinary: the fields of public health, population health, epidemiology, economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, medicine, and history are all represented here.

Part I, on social policy, includes Navarro?s critique of Sen?s influential Development As Freedom, Sen?s own analysis of gender and development, a comparison of the consequences of Swedish and British labor market policies, and several analyses of the evolution of international economic inequalities. Part II centers on the contested concept of globalization, with an international empirical analysis of its consequences for global well-being over the last two decades, a description of growing health inequalities by income in the United States since the 1960s, and an account of the expansion of managed care in semiperipheral countries. Part III, on health policy, presents a critique of a controversial 2000 WHO report and two analyses of contemporary U.S. health policy. Part IV, on health care, provides international empirical evidence on the negative effects of privatization, in particular in hospitals, nursing homes, and health services utilization. Part V focuses on occupational health and labor unions, including the crucial role of unions in protecting worker?s safety and health. One chapter tells the story of New York?s legendary SEIU 1199; another addresses the neglected area of women?s occupational health; another provides dramatic case studies on violations of workers? freedom of association and their consequences. Part VI, on social capital versus class, gender, and race, deals with one of the most heated theoretical and empirical debates in contemporary social epidemiology. Most of the contributors provide arguments and data that challenge communitarian approaches to health disparities, focusing instead on political factors, welfare state provisions, and class, race, and gender inequalities as major sources of inequalities in health. Finally, Part VII addresses the role of ideology, theory, and research policy in the production and maintenance of social inequalities in health. Ideology is not usually seen as a social determinant of population health, but the contributors here show the role of ideology in shaping scientific views about race and health disparities, as well as the implicit understanding of determinants of health and disease. The final chapter presents a critical overview of recent ideological attempts at discrediting empirical research on health disparities and social epidemiology.

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