the world health organization released a report yesterday the basic argument of which is that stratification of wealth, stratification of access to resources (health, education), stratification of access to decent employment all along class lines constitutes a massive problem of health at the global level. the most straightforward of arguments: poverty--absolute AND relative (that is poverty within an otherwise affluent society) kills. it shortens life expectancies.
here's a little article about the report from this morning's guardian:
Quote:
Social injustice cutting life expectancy, UN report says
Inequality caused by poverty, poor education and bad housing is 'killing on a grand scale', WHO study finds
A "toxic" mix of social injustice and bad policies is killing on a grand scale around the world and in the UK, according to a major United Nations report published today.
The gap between rich and poor is such that a child born in the Glasgow suburb of Calton can expect to live 28 years less than one born in Lenzie, eight miles away.
This substantial gap between the life expectancy of children of the most affluent and privileged, and those who are born into deprivation and get fewer chances as they grow up is present in every society around the world, the report finds.
Inadequate education and bad housing are key factors impacting on life expectancy around the world. But some countries are better than others at closing the gap.
The report, by a World Health Organisation commission chaired by the British professor Sir Michael Marmot, shows that the poor health and shorter lives of the least fortunate has reduced life expectancy in the UK to 79 years. It trails Japan, with an average of 83, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Italy.
Stark disparities within the UK are also highlighted by the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. A boy born in Hampstead, London, will live around 11 years longer than a boy from St Pancras, five stops away on the Northern line of the underground.
Adult death rates were generally 2.5 times higher in the most deprived areas of the UK than in the most affluent.
An example from the US recorded the fact that 886,202 deaths would have been averted between 1991 and 2000 if the death rates of white and black Americans had been equal.
Highlighting inequalities between different parts of the world, a girl born in Lesotho, southern Africa, is likely to die 42 years younger than one born in Japan.
In Sweden, one in 17,400 women die during childbirth, compared with one in eight in Afghanistan.
While healthcare, good hospitals and doctors play their part, the report says that the conditions in which children grow up and live as adults are fundamental to their chances of good health, and some have it much better than others.
But the social injustice which leads to health inequality could be eradicated within a generation, it says.
The report says a "toxic combination of bad policies, economics and politics is in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible. Social injustice is killing on a grand scale."
The commission calls for worldwide government action to eradicate the unjust disparities in social background that lead to shorter lives. It wants every government policy and programme to be assessed for its impact on health.
Above all, it says, governments should invest in high-quality education with a major focus on intervening in the earliest years, from the womb to the age of eight. Affordable housing, encouragement for people to use healthier modes of transport, and controls on junk food and alcohol outlets are all important, as is the availability of full, fair and decent employment for all on a living wage.
Marmot said: "What we want policy to do is to create the conditions that empower people so that all people have the freedom to live flourishing lives.
"Following our recommendations would dramatically improve the health and life chances of billions of people."
The health secretary, Alan Johnson, has given strong support to the work of the commission. The Department of Health will hold a conference in November to discuss the report's findings.
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Social injustice cutting life expectancy, UN report says | Society | guardian.co.uk
and here is a link to the full report:
http://www.who.int/social_determinan...eport_2008.pdf
what this amounts to is a simple claim: class stratification is a form of slow murder.
and it's correlate: if your worldview is, say, neoliberal--that is if your economic worldview is such that it's consequences are increases in class stratification, of uneven distribution of wealth and access to resources--you are complicit.
for as long as i have been playing at tfp, one of the main divisions between political positions has been about class. the free-marketeers tend to see economic relations as unfolding in an abstract space, separate from the rest of social reality; they tend to view the effects of market relations as producing economic hierarchies which are rationalized with appeals to morality---and because the "natural" workings of these mystical formations "markets" reflects one's ethical worth, it follows that patterns of exclusion are blamed on those who are excluded.
if you do not accept the basic distinction "markets"/social reality, and link the consequences of market action to the wider social environments within which they operate, which they effect, then it is much more difficult to wish away the excluded by blaming their exclusion on mythological "moral failing"
now this report restates in a sense what has long been obvious: class inequality--the lack of social justice in the terminology of the report (an interesting term substitution, very much a sign of the times)---kills.
it does so routinely, it does so every day, everywhere, all the time.
this makes of capitalism itself what it is: a central ethical and political Problem.
but the argument hinges on what such arguments always hinge on: control over the axioms and control over the premises---what information is factored in, what information is left out.
but it is remarkable to me---something about being american, about the ideology of being american---results in a kind of inability to come to terms with consequences that outstrip the reach of an atomized individual--if you can't go to a building, sign a piece of paper and do something to "make up for" a problem, then that problem has to be swept away, ignored. a country built on genocide apparently acquires this quirk as a gift from its history.
do you think this report makes a persuasive case?
do you think it should have an impact on the election cycle, on which issues are discussed and how?
what gets in the way?
do you think the united states is capable of addressing these problems domestically? of contributing to this process internationally?
what gets in the way?