About the Book
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 neighbourhood, city, region, country, and globally. 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.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Toward an Integrated Political, Economic, and Cultural Understanding of Health Inequalities Vicente Navarro and Carles Muntaner
PART I Social Policy
Development and Quality of Life: A Critique of Amartya Sen's Development As Freedom Vicente Navarro
Gender Equity and the Population Problem Amartya Sen
Inequality in the Social Consequences of Illness: How Well Do People with Long-Term Illness Fare in the British and Swedish Labor Markets? Bo Burstriöm, Margaret Whitehead, Christina Lindholm, and Finn Diderichsen
Economic Growth, Inequality, and the Economic Position of the Poor in 1985-1995: An International Perspective Olli Kangas
Cross-National Income Inequality: How Great Is It and What Can We Learn from It? Timothy M. Smeeding and Peter Gottschalk
Inequality as a Basis for the U.S. Emergence from the Great Stagnation Robert Chernomas
PART II Globalization
The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Its Consequences for Economic and Social Well-Being Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev, and Judy Chen
The Widening Gap in Death Rates among Income Groups in the United States from 1967 to 1986 Lisa Miller Schalick, Wilbur C. Hadden, Elsie Pamuk, Vicente Navarro, and Gregory Pappas
Dependent Convergence: The Importation of Technological Hazards by Semiperipheral Countries Carlos Eduardo Siqueira and Charles Levenstein
How the United States Exports Managed Care to Developing Countries Howard Waitzkin and Celia Iriart
PART III Health Policy
The New Conventional Wisdom: An Evaluation of the WHO Report Health Systems: Improving Performance Yvonne Wells and David de Vaus
Cost Containment and the Backdraft of Competition Policies Donald W. Light
Upstream Healthy Public Policy: Lessons from the Battle of Tobacco John B. McKinlay and Lisa D. Marceau
PART IV Health Care
Phases of Capitalism, Welfare States, Medical Dominance, and Health Care in Ontario David Coburn
Does Investor-Ownership of Nursing Homes Compromise the Quality of Care? Charlene Harrington, Steffie Woolhandler, Joseph Mullan, Hellen Carrillo, and David U. Himmelstein
Hospital Ownership and Preventable Adverse Events Eric J. Thomas, E. John Orav, and Troyen A. Brennan
Social Inequalities in Perceived Health and the Use of Health Services in a Southern European Urban Area Carme Borrell, Izabella Rohlfs, Josep Ferrando, Isabel Pasarín, Felicitas Domínguez-Berjón, and Antoni Plasència
PART V Occupational Health and Labor Unions
Health Care Worker's Unions and Health Insurance: The 1199 Story Howard S. Berliner, Geoffrey Gibson, and Cyprian Devine-Perez
Role of Trade Unions in Workplace Health Promotion Mauri Johansson and Timo Partanen
One-Eyed Science: Scientists, Workplace Reproductive Hazards, and the Right to Work Karen Messing
Labor, Social, and Human Rights A Case Studies of Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association: Service Sector Workers
B Case Studies of Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association: Manufacturing Workers Human Rights Watch
PART VI Social Capital versus Class, Gender, and Race
A Critique of Social Capital Vicente Navarro
Economic Inequality, Working-Class Power, Social Capital, and Cause-Specific Mortality in Wealthy Countries Carles Muntaner, John W. Lynch, Marianne Hillemeier, Ju Hee Lee, Richard David, Joan Benach, and Carme Borrell
Social Capital, Disorganized Communities, and the Third Way: Understanding the Retreat from Structural Inequalities in Epidemiology and Public Health Carles Muntaner, John Lynch, and George Davey Smith
Community Health Centers and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Healthy Life Leiyu Shi, Jerrilynn Regan, Robert M. Politzer, and Jue Luo
Gender, Race, Class, and Aging: Advances and Opportunities Paula Dressel, Meredith Minkler, and Irene Yen
PART VII Ideology, Theory, and Research Policy
People and Places: Contrasting Perspectives on the Association between Social Class and Health George A. Kaplan
A Debate on Race, Racism, Health, and Epidemiology A Race in Epidemiology Paul D. Stolley
B Refiguring "Race": Epidemiology, Racialized Biology, and Biological Expressions of Race Relations Nancy Krieger
C On the Study of Race, Racism, and Health: A Shift from Description to Explanation Thomas A. LaVeist
D Reply to Commentaries by Drs. Krieger and LaVeist on "Race in Epidemiology" Paul D. Stolley
Anti-Egalitarianism, Legitimizing Myths, Racism, and "Neo-McCarthyism" in Social Epidemiology and Public Health: A Review of Sally Satel's PC, MD Carles Muntaner and Marisela B. Gomez
Whose Epidemiology, Whose Health? Steve Wing
Conclusion: Political and Economic Determinants of Class, Gender, and Race Inequalities in Health-An Agenda for the 21st Century Vicente Navarro and Carles Muntaner
Index
Review :
"This remarkable collection explores, from many perspectives, some of the most crucial problems of social policy of the coming years, not least in the United States. These penetrating essays range from theoretical and analytic dissection of fundamental moral, political, and economic issues to close investigation of a wide variety of critically important cases. For those concerned about what lies ahead - and what we can and should do about it - the collection is not only valuable but indispensable." - Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus, MIT"
