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Showing posts with label Developed country. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Developed country. Show all posts

Monday, July 28, 2014

Inequality Is Not Inevitable

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
AN insidious trend has developed over this past third of a century. A country that experienced shared growth after World War II began to tear apart, so much so that when the Great Recession hit in late 2007, one could no longer ignore the fissures that had come to define the American economic landscape. How did this “shining city on a hill” become the advanced country with the greatest level of inequality?
One stream of the extraordinary discussion set in motion by Thomas Piketty’s timely, important book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has settled on the idea that violent extremes of wealth and income are inherent to capitalism. In this scheme, we should view the decades after World War II — a period of rapidly falling inequality — as an aberration.
This is actually a superficial reading of Mr. Piketty’s work, which provides an institutional context for understanding the deepening of inequality over time. Unfortunately, that part of his analysis received somewhat less attention than the more fatalistic-seeming aspects.
Javier JaƩn
Over the past year and a half, The Great Divide, a series in The New York Times for which I have served as moderator, has also presented a wide range of examples that undermine the notion that there are any truly fundamental laws of capitalism. The dynamics of the imperial capitalism of the 19th century needn’t apply in the democracies of the 21st. We don’t need to have this...
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Monday, November 25, 2013

These Are The 36 Countries That Have Better Healthcare Systems Than The US

surgery doctors
12 years ago, the World Health Organization released the World Health Report 2000. Inside the report there was an ambitious task — to rank the world's best healthcare systems.
The results became notorious — the US healthcare system came in 15th in overall performance, and first in overall expenditure per capita. That result meant that its overall ranking was 37th.
The results have long been debated, with critics arguing that the data was out-of-date, incomplete, and that factors such as literacy and life expectancy were over-weighted.
So controversial were the results that the WHO declined to rank countries in their World Health Report 2010, but the debate has raged on. In that same year, a report from the Commonwealth Fund ranked seven developed countries on their health care performance — the US came dead last.
So, what can we learn from the report?
NOTE: The rankings are based on an index of five factors — health, health equality, responsiveness, responsiveness equality, and fair financial contribution. As noted above, all data is from 2000 or earlier and these findings have been questioned.
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Sunday, November 3, 2013

Stable Jobs = Healthier Lives

Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.rwjf.org

The NewPublicHealth National Prevention Strategy series is underway, including interviews with Cabinet Secretaries and their National Prevention Council designees, exploring the impact of jobs, transportation and more on health. “Stable Jobs = Healthier Lives” tells a visual story on the role of employment in the health of our communities.
Some highlights:
  • Since 1977, the life expectancy of male workers retiring at age 65 has risen 6 years in the top half of the income distribution, but only 1.3 years in the bottom half.
  • 12.3 million Americans were unemployed as of October 2012.
  • Laid-off workers are 54% more likely to have fair or poor health, and 83% more likely to develop a stress-releated health condition.
  • There are nearly 3 million nonfatal workplace injuries each year.
  • The United States is one of the few developed nations without universal paid sick days.
Also check out our previous infographics exploring the connection between transportation and health, and education and health.
For more on employment and health, read a related issue brief.View the full infographic below.
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