This paper studies the causes of China’s Great Famine, during which 16.5 to 45 million individuals perished in rural areas. We document that average rural food retention during the famine was too high to generate a severe famine without rural inequality in food availability; that there was significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions; and that rural mortality rates were p...

Although the influence of democracy in preventing famines has been reported, there have been no empirical studies on the relation between the extent of freedom allowed by political regimes and the effect on a nation’s health. We explored the effect of democracy on life expectancy and maternal and infant mortality in most countries, taking into account a country’s wealth, its level of inequality...

BACKGROUND The fourth Millennium Development Goal calls for a two-thirds reduction in under-5 mortality between 1990 and 2015. Under-5 mortality rate is declining, but many countries are still far from achieving the goal. Effective child health interventions that could reduce child mortality exist, but national decision-makers lack contextual information for priority setting in their respective...

Despite a tremendous increase in financial resources, many countries are not on track to achieve the child and maternal mortality targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. It is commonly argued that two main social factors - improved democratic governance and aggregate income - will ultimately lead to progress in reducing child and maternal mortality. However, these two facto...

OBJECTIVES There is limited cross-national research on youth mortality. We examined age-and gender-variations in all-cause mortality among youth aged 15-34 years across 52 countries. METHODS Using the 2014 WHO mortality database, mortality rates for all countries were computed for the latest available year between 2007 and 2012. Rates, rate ratios, and ordinary least squares (OLS) and Poisson...

BACKGROUND Korea has achieved considerable economic growth more rapidly than most other countries, but disparities in income level have increased. Therefore, we sought to assess the association between income inequality and mortality across Korean cities. METHODS Data on household income were obtained from the 2010-2012 Korean Community Health Survey and data on all-cause mortality and other ...

This study used US state-level data from 1985 to 1995 to examine the relationship of primary care resources and income inequality with all-cause mortality within the entire population, and in black and white populations. The study is a pooled ecological design with repeated measures using 11 years of state-level data (n=549). Analyses controlled for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics...

The measurement of inequality is often made using observed population-based distributions, such as the distribution of income or the distribution of members of different groups across neighborhoods. Unfortunately, such population distributions confound past and present behavior. Here, we advocate measuring inequality using behavior as reflected by transitions between categories of interest (e.g...

OBJECTIVE To compare all cause mortality between the north and south of England over four decades. DESIGN Population wide comparative observational study of mortality. SETTING Five northernmost and four southernmost English government office regions. POPULATION All residents in each year from 1965 to 2008. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Death rate ratios of north over south England by age band a...

0277-9536/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.12.015 With its uniquely long historical series of officially collected data on occupational mortality, researchers in the UK have been well placed to investigate the causes of health inequality. Since 1921, the decennial Census of England and Wales has contained an “Occupational Mortality Supplement” that tabulates ...