X-Message-Number: 29638
References: <>
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Re: "The Future Aint What it Used to Be!" 
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 11:37:30 +0200

On 4 Jul 2007, at 16:49,  wrote:

> And, there is a great concept I have often referred to as  the  
> "USEFUL MYTH."
>
>
> (To my knowledge, this verbiage is original  with me...but it  
> probably is
> not.

See Ernest Becker / TMT on the 'vital lie'.



> And I FEEL...or at least I desperately WANT  to feel... that life  
> is INDEED
> getting better for most of us.

The neo-liberal economic program is increasing inequality and  
decreasing the incomes of the poorest. The World Bank's Structural  
Adjustment Programs have eliminated public health and immunization  
programs. These are major causes of declines in health status.  
Another is the Bush/Pope/other religious fundamentalist attack upon  
condom use, which has accelerated the spread of AIDS and sexually  
transmitted infections. So, the improvements that we saw in the 60's  
and 70's are grinding to a halt for the vast majority and actually  
going backward in some cases. This is causing a loss in labor power  
and is a source of social instability. It is the failure to use the  
technology we have, not the lack of technological progress that is  
impacting the vast majority. With this dynamic, the complaints of a  
few that life extension technologies aren't progressing fast enough  
will not be taken very seriously.

dss

www.wider.unu.edu/publications/ rps/research-papers-2006.htm

Research Paper No. 2006/10
Health Improvements and Health Inequality during the Last 40 Years
Giovanni Andrea Cornia and Leonardo Menchini
February 2006
Abstract
This paper juxtaposes changes over the last forty years in income  
growth and
distribution with the mortality changes recorded at the aggregate  
level in about 170
countries and at the individual level in 26 countries with at least  
two demographic and
health surveys covering the last twenty years. Over the 1980s and  
1990s, the infant
mortality rate, under-5 mortality rate, and life expectancy at birth  
mostly continued the
favourable trends that characterized the 1960s and 1970s. Yet,  
especially in the 1990s,
the pace of health improvement was slower than that recorded during  
the prior decades.
In addition, the distribution between countries of aggregate health  
improvements
became markedly more skewed. These trends are in part explained by  
the negative
changes recorded in sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe, but are  
robust to the
removal of the two regions from the sample. This tendency is observed  
also at the
intraregional level, with the exception of Western Europe. Thirdly,  
demographic and
health survey data for 26 developing countries point to a frequent  
divergence over time in
the within-country distribution of gains in the infant mortality and  
under-5 mortality
rates among children living in urban versus rural areas and belonging  
to families part of
different quantiles of the asset distribution. The paper concludes by  
underscoring the
similarities and linkages between changes in income inequality and  
health inequality
and suggests some tentative explanations of these trends without,  
however, formally
testing them.


David Stodolsky    Skype: davidstodolsky

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