Economic Inequality and Health (Two TED Videos)

TEDxRainier - Stephen Bezruchka

In this video, Stephen Bezruchka discusses the health of average Americans compared to people in other countries. He finds that health and wealth are intricately connected.  Highlights include:

• We spend half of all the money spent worldwide on health care, and we spend it mostly during the last few years of life. 
• We stand 49th among nations in the world ranking for length of life.
• We live 3.9 years less than people in the healthiest nation, Japan.
• For those over 50 yrs. old, length of life has been declining compared to other countries. 
• In almost a third of U.S. counties, life expectancy for American women is declining. 
• Stress is the tobacco of the 21st Century. 
• Over 200 studies demonstrate that the greater the income gap, the worse health becomes... the medicine that would heal us is a healthy dose of "Robin Hood." 
• What about the quality of our shorter-lived lives? Measures of happiness and well-being have been declining in the last 40 years, especially for women. 
• We consume half of the world's anti-depressants.
• Our shorter-lived lives are not healthy ones.
• Most of the longer-lived countries smoke more than we do. Why are people smoking more and living longer? What matters most in producing a healthy, long life is the nature of "caring and sharing" relationships in society. These matter more than exercising, not smoking, and eating well.
• Caring and sharing are closely linked to the economic gap between rich and poor. The gap has reached record levels over the last 35 years. During this time, our choices have limited our potential for achieving greater health.

About this video by TEDxTalks 

Dr. Stephen Bezruchka seeks to expose why health disparities among nations around the globe are at record highs and empowers people to address the socioeconomic inequities that have most impact on the health of populations. He is especially interested in how people in the USA don't live very long or healthy lives... Bezruchka worked in clinical medicine for 35 years. He received the UW School of Public Health's 2002 Outstanding Teacher Award and the 2008 Faculty Community Service Award. He founded the Population Health Forum to raise awareness of, promote dialogue about, and explore how political, economic and social inequalities interact to reduce the overall health status of our society. TEDxRainier is an independently produced TED event held in Seattle, Washington.

****

In this next video, Richard Wilkinson talks about How economic inequality harms societies. He discusses why societies with huge income gaps are "somehow going wrong" and shows the real effects of widening wealth gaps on people's health, lifespans, and basic values such as trust.

Transcript:

You all know the truth of what I'm going to say. I think the intuition that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive has been around since before the French Revolution. What's changed is we now can look at the evidence, we can compare societies, more and less equal societies, and see what inequality does. I'm going to take you through that data and then explain why the links I'm going to be showing you exist.

But first, see what a miserable lot we are. (Laughter) I want to start though with a paradox. This shows you life expectancy against gross national income -- how rich countries are on average. And you see the countries on the right, like Norway and the USA, are twice as rich as Israel, Greece, Portugal on the left. And it makes no difference to their life expectancy at all. There's no suggestion of a relationship there. But if we look within our societies, there are extraordinary social gradients in health running right across society. This, again, is life expectancy.

These are small areas of England and Wales -- the poorest on the right, the richest on the left. A lot of difference between the poor and the rest of us. Even the people just below the top have less good health than the people at the top. So income means something very important within our societies, and nothing between them. The explanation of that paradox is that, within our societies, we're looking at relative income or social position, social status -- where we are in relation to each other and the size of the gaps between us. And as soon as you've got that idea, you should immediately wonder: what happens if we widen the differences, or compress them, make the income differences bigger or smaller?

And that's what I'm going to show you. I'm not using any hypothetical data. I'm taking data from the U.N. -- it's the same as the World Bank has -- on the scale of income differences in these rich developed market democracies. The measure we've used, because it's easy to understand and you can download it, is how much richer the top 20 percent than the bottom 20 percent in each country. And you see in the more equal countries on the left -- Japan, Finland, Norway, Sweden -- the top 20 percent are about three and a half, four times as rich as the bottom 20 percent. But on the more unequal end -- U.K., Portugal, USA, Singapore -- the differences are twice as big. On that measure, we are twice as unequal as some of the other successful market democracies.

Now I'm going to show you what that does to our societies. We collected data on problems with social gradients, the kind of problems that are more common at the bottom of the social ladder. Internationally comparable data on life expectancy, on kids' maths and literacy scores, on infant mortality rates, homicide rates, proportion of the population in prison, teenage birthrates, levels of trust, obesity, mental illness -- which in standard diagnostic classification includes drug and alcohol addiction -- and social mobility. We put them all in one index. They're all weighted equally. Where a country is is a sort of average score on these things. And there, you see it in relation to the measure of inequality I've just shown you, which I shall use over and over again in the data. The more unequal countries are doing worse on all these kinds of social problems. It's an extraordinarily close correlation. But if you look at that same index of health and social problems in relation to GNP per capita, gross national income, there's nothing there, no correlation anymore. 

Continue reading the transcript here >

Richard Wilkinson studies the social effects of income inequality and how social forces affect health. In The Spirit Level, a book Richard coauthored with Kate Pickett, he presents statistical evidence that, among developed countries, societies that are more equal –with a smaller income gap between rich and poor -- are happier and healthier than societies with greater disparities in the distribution of wealth.  More here > 

Comments

[shawn002]

Well its true and some meaurses like changing habit can help to minimize heath risk

Colon flow

[shawn002]

yeah its true and i agree with all aspects of this post

Meladerm boots

[Bruce Krasting]

Are you suggesting that the trickle down theory is not working so well? We keep getting more of that economic malarkey every year. No wonder everyone is pissed.

[ilene]

Guess so, trickle down doesn't work so well as an economic theory. But there are some things that do trickle down - mostly liquidy things. 

[Ag1761]

We consume half of the world's anti-depressants.

I personally have just consumed the other half after trawling through this post

[narnia]

if you remove bombs, prisons, poor public education, subsidized chemicals passed off as food, policjng a plant, handing out mass subsidies in finance and the countless other ways our national income is wasted for us in the name of equality, justice and efficiency, we would all be wealthier. give me some piece of this country that doesnt force all this crap and I will be there.

[laosuwan]

this study does not control for immigration so the underlying assumption that the population has not changed is invalid. You can make a case for usa people eating more spices, which is true. but if you dont adjust for immigration the data is meaningless

[foofoojin]

Most people add to there previous post instead of create a new one. thank you ilene for the +1 anyways.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/extreme-poverty-now-record-levels#c...

[ptolemy_newit]

Ilene,

Your face has supreme character!  Neanderthals talk about money!

Tell us about 2016.

[nah]

blah blah blah

.

all this shit is bullshit... best hope new normals got is OWS fighting for a anti-super national government by stateless criminal global 'enterprise' as some fucking message... and like representation of neighborhoods by people

.

the feds are playing dick n' mouth with the states

[Stuck on Zero]

My wife booked an appointment with the gynecologist in our health plan.  It was 3 months out.  Yesterday when she arrived they said there had been an emergency and the appointment was cancelled.  She took the first available appointment.  March 13!

[ptolemy_newit]

nice book report any original thesis or theories?

Phil what you think?

[ED]

Theres nothing more worthy than health as a destination for an economies resources

[ironymonger]

Sigh. Another Disparity article.

No age cohort and spreads described. Not a single chart to  describe the demographics in and among the countries.

Why is it that statists think government will adjust disparity justily, without favor, corruption, or incompentence? Why the blind faith in the State?

[batterycharged]

It's my opinion that the structure of the economy and society are mostly irrelevant compared to the character of the people.

If people had the character that they could follow the "each according to" paradigm, well that would work. It's not that the theory of communism is faulty, it's that people are.

That's why people that are all in for either government or laissez-faire are missing the boat. You have to ask what is the character of your people first.

We see that free market with the same corruptable people fails as much as a government-dominated society with the same people. Liars and cheats are the problem.

Maybe we need to focus in on morality rather than some left-right ideology.Maybe we need to start caning people in public and humiliate people that suck.

I'm not religious, but we're a moral-less society. Picking free market over socialism isn't going to change that.

[onebir]

I think you've got a point. But are there methods to actually make people more moral (/altruistic)? And if there are, how do you get the corrupt political (etc) classes to admit they're corrupt and start implementing such methods? :(

[gangland]

gee...I guess bears do actually shit in the woods.

[Dingleberry]

All you need to know about health is this:

STRESS KILLS. Period. End of story.  Stress, or more accurately, resentment/anger,  is the cause of many mental illnesses. notice how "voices" always tell schizos to kill someone instead of hug them? Hypertension and diabetes (type 2) are pure stress. Obesity (i.e. using food as a drug) pure stress. I saw it for many years working in the medical field. Funny how no one ever got better, but got more drugs and bigger bills. A wise man I heard once said "medicine today only lets people live longer wronger".  That, my friends, is the truth. And it's also coincidentally where the money is.  Learn to not stress, and you won't need a doc unless you break something.  Or you can go on doing what you are doing and stressing, getting angry and such, and get sicker and broker and on more pills which will never work long-term. It's up to you.  

[AldousHuxley]

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/bruce-wasserstein-lazard-chief-dies/

It is not just the poor dying....it is also the workaholics who die before retirement.

Mother nature is slowly getting rid of workaholic type-A types who are detriment our species.

Top rungs of chimps also are more stressed scientists found. Stress to keep their power because there are new young males being born every year.

Evolution is saying that "if you have to work that hard, then you are not fit enough to survive"

Billions is no good when you are dead or dying.

The winners are simple living folks living on social security until 110 when all these corporate drones go bald at 40, divorce at 45, heartattack at 50, and death at 55. You also see mid-life crisis cars in kids as young as 30 years old.

Nature doesn't give a shit about productivity as in GDP. It only cares about reproductivity.

[Element]

It's interesting to compare now to the development of fascist philosophy and attitudes with regard to social responsibilities and roles, and rights, and the births/deaths issue, because this was all very popular, and much of it is again being voiced, routinely. Populism is gaining hold in reaction to the excesses and perceived moral and ethical decay and corruption of the recent past, and especially the present. It's a long but interesting overview of what's happening - again.

A Wiki except below with regard to economics and social expectations in a real fascist state. Many here say much the same things simply because it makes 'sense', and thus becomes popular, and history shows it was wildly successful, once enacted ... .

Fascism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

  Economic planning

Fascists opposed the laissez-faire economic policies that were dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression.^[221] After the Great Depression began, many people from across the political spectrum blamed laissez-faire capitalism, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and communism.^[196]

Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering.^[222] Nazis and other anti-Semitic fascists considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy".^[223] Fascist governments introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.^[224]

Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual."^[225] Private property rights were supported but were contingent upon service to the state.^[226] For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labour than he would find profitable."^[227] However, they promoted the interests of successful small businesses.^[228] Mussolini wrote approvingly of the notion that profits should not be taken away from those who produced them by their own labour, saying "I do not respect — I even hate — those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others".^[229]

According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies.^[230] The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7: "The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation", then continued in article 9: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."^[231]

[edit]     Social welfare

Benito Mussolini promised a "social revolution" that would "remake" the Italian people. According to Patricia Knight, this was only achieved in part.^[232] The people who primarily benefited from Italian fascist social policies were members of the middle and lower-middle classes, who filled jobs in the vastly expanded government workforce, which grew from about 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs in 1930 alone.^[232] Health and welfare spending grew dramatically under Italian fascism, with welfare rising from 7% of the budget in 1930 to 20% in 1940.^[233]

The Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) or "National After-work Program" was one major social welfare initiative in Fascist Italy. Created in 1925, it was the state's largest recreational organisation for adults.^[234] The Dopolavoro was responsible for establishing and maintaining 11,000 sports grounds, over 6,400 libraries, 800 movie houses, 1,200 theatres, and over 2,000 orchestras.^[234] Membership of the Dopolavoro was voluntary, but it had high participation because of its nonpolitical nature.^[234] It is estimated that, by 1936, the OND had organised 80% of salaried workers^[235] and, by 1939, 40% of the industrial workforce. The sports activities proved popular with large numbers of workers. The OND had the largest membership of any of the mass Fascist organisations in Italy.^[236]

The enormous success of the Dopolavoro in Fascist Italy was the key factor in Nazi Germany's creation of its own version of the Dopolavoro, the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) or "Strength through Joy" program of the Nazi government's German Labour Front, which became even more successful than the Dopolavoro.^[237] KdF provided government-subsidized holidays for German workers.^[238] KdF was also responsible for the creation of the original Volkswagen ("People's Car"), a state-manufactured automobile that was meant to be cheap enough to allow all German citizens to be able to own one.

While fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions affecting their nation or race as whole, they did not support social welfare for egalitarian reasons. Fascists criticised egalitarianism as preserving the weak. They instead promoted social Darwinist views.^[239][240] Adolf Hitler was opposed to egalitarian and universal social welfare because, in his view, it encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and feeble.^[241] While in power, the Nazis created social welfare programs to deal with the large numbers of unemployed. However, those programs were neither egalitarian nor universal, excluding many minority groups and other people whom they felt posed a threat to the future health of the German people.^[242]

It may not be democratic but it was popular with the masses ... at first ... or at least they didn't step out of line to complain ... at first ... then they discovered dissent was not a survivable action.  The fascists wanted to clean and perfect their society, and if you were a perceived blemish or weakness, mentally or genetically a liability to the state and the society, you could quickly end up ... a non-problem. Once that takes hold and becomes popular (via propaganda) it's then a descent into social decimation.

And that's the lesson and trend we need to appreciate now, not later. The State and the parties and even the financiers will happily throw up someone to do this, to meet popular demand to purge the scum from a degenerate society. The Fascists did not just want to clean out bankers, and the rich, or the greedy and the decadent, or the foreign interlopers, the wanted to clean the entire national gene pool, as well, as they saw this as key to the renovation of their people, and their society, for many decades to come.

The destruction that resulted was seen as beneficial, necessary and proper.

Walmart people ... gone.

The homeless dependent beggars living in your stairwell ... gone.

Those unable or unwilling to earn a living ... gone.

Those with a genetic defect or hereditary disorder ... gone.

Those who were bankers and financiers and social parasites ... gone.

Those Jewish shop-keepers that kept raising prices on the Germans ... gone.

Those deemed of an unsound mind ... gone.

Those not conforming to the cultural model ... gone.

[OWS protesters ... gone]

And any useful remainder got bombed and shot at the front, or were worked to death as captive slave labourers. Specific social equality was not the aim. It was barbaric, but very popular, despite being non-democratic, and produced incredibly good results for a few years. The people felt the Govt was doing all the right things to the extent that they fought to the death, right to the very end, without general surrender.

We are still a long way from thissituation. It took about 20 years for it to develop fully in Europe before they got to the extreme stage of its enactment, but the philosophy of fascism had been around and well-established for a long period prior to political expression.  We are entering into a broad-based populism again. It could remain fairly moderate, and it will certainly develop in very different ways to previously, but the conditions for the spread and grow and seduce are present and amplifying in a world of profound inequality and resulting increased social and political dyfunction.

[BigDuke6]

A truly excellent comment - feel free to use it in one or two other threads becasue it may not be seen much here.

i feel frustrated that my ilk are being pushed into more right wing views to the point of giving up with it all. the west is changing rapidly and thats volatile.

extremists are bad news and it drives me crazy that it seems to be encouraged now on all sides.

point of interest - you may want to read about wikipedia being bullshit.   look up bank guy in brussels he had some good links a few threads ago.

[PulauHantu29]

"Eat broccoli, be happy" my Dad says.

Stay away from doctors if at all possible since they must charge alot to pay for the $60k a year med school and upteen years of slavery...ooops, I mean residency stuff.

Don't even get me started on the massive Overcharging by Hospitals! $20 Bucks for a Bandaide! Come on.....

However, why is it people complain when a heart surgeon earns $600k a year for saving lives....and not when a Banker is Bonused $20 million? ...or an athlete $60 million over five years for throwing a ball around?

How strange we humans are, eh?

All in all, USA docs are still the Best in my book!

[BORT]

Actually watch and listen.  It is long but very interesting.  I wonder if anyone on the Super Committee would take the time to listen and understand

[jimmyjames]

 Measures of happiness and well-being have been declining in the last 40 years, especially for women.

****************

I can fix that-

[adr]

Is your nickname Monty?

[PSEUDOLOGOI]

"My body aches for the anaconda." Blythe.

[bank guy in Brussels]

Viva Northern- and Western-European-style Continental semi-socialist democracy! ... where life is sweet ... tho most Americans don't realise it is precisely our part 'socialism' mixed with a market economy, that makes it so nice here.

May our way of life survive the onslaught of the neo-liberal, pro-austerity, anti-working-people goons.

[ISEEIT]

"May our way of life survive the onslaught of the neo-liberal, pro-austerity, anti-working-people goons."

You could have simply said "the political class".

Good luck with that by the way. And if you think adding steroids to the political class by going all in with supranational elitist one world government is going to improve the life of the average citizen, we have a President here in America that you are more than welcome to crown your king once we dethrone his ass in about a year.

[notbot]

"May our way of life survive the onslaught of the neo-liberal, pro-austerity, anti-working-people goons"

May your way of life suspend the laws of basic 3rd grade math that show it's completely unsustainable and will inevitably collapse

[topcallingtroll]

Socialist utopias are like heaven on earth in the credit expansion phase of the business cycle.

We will see who implodes first on the contraction phase.

[BigDuke6]

Yep if they inherit a boom period they can piss that money away on shit you wouldn't believe.

Labour in the uk during the finance boom (they inherited) of 2000 to 2007 had 'street football co-ordinators' on a nice wage.  Lots of nobodys sucking on the government teat.

As far as health goes - 80% of lifetime health costs are in their last 3 months. i used to see it all the time, the oldies so scared of dying they'd suck the life out of a baby to get another month of circling the plughole.

i guess they got no faith in jeezus anymore.

[opg84]

Seems like this guy is manipulating the data to me because the number of countries on each of his charts changes. It should be uniform, if you have x number of countries on your first chart you should have x countries on them all. His first starts with 22, another has 23, and another has as little as 10, specifically the one he uses to take a jab at americans. Save your BS for the ignorant pal.

[VyseLegendaire]

At the end he explains that whenever data was available, it was present.  SO maybe they just didn't have any data for those particular countries.  Still I doubt it woukld have changed the evident trend. 

[Element]

Strange though when they emphasise inequality, without mentioning its principle operative mechanism - the allowance and entertainment of endless greed.