background: investment in science is vital for the development and well-being of societies. this study aims to assess the scientific productivity of countries by quantifying their publication of systematic reviews taking the gross national income per capita (gnipc) into account. methods: medline and isi web of science were searched for systematic reviews published between 1st january 2006 and 3...

International climate policy has assigned the leading role in emissions abatement to the industrialized countries while developing countries remain uncommitted to binding emission reduction targets. However, cooperation between the industrialized and the developing world through joint implementation of emission abatement promises substantial economic gains to both parties. In this context, the ...

Road use patterns in Delhi, India are very different from those in cities in highly industrialized countries. In Delhi roads are also shared by unmotorized vehicles in large numbers. This study is an attempt to understand fatal crash patterns in Delhi in 1980 using police data. The results indicate that fatality patterns in Delhi are very different from those in highly industrialized countries....

Tony Atkinson has produced a first-rate paper carefully documenting recent trends in the distribution of income and earnings in advanced industrial nations. He demonstrates the important point that there is considerable heterogeneity among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations in both the level of economic inequality and in changes in the dispersion of income and ...

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed much convergence in life expectancy around the world. Closer inspection of mortality trends in advanced countries reveals that inequality in adult life spans, which we measure with the standard deviation of ages at death above age 10, S10, is increasingly responsible for the remaining divergence in mortality. We report striking differences in l...

This article reports the findings of a study developed to compare health care costs in the United States with those of eight other industrially advanced countries over the period 1960-76. All of the countries studied were found to share with the United States the problem of increased health care spending that has outpaced inflation in other sectors of the economy and continues to consume a grow...

Introduction of a vaccine requires the achievement of three initial milestones. These are licensure by a national control authority that determines the vaccine is safe and effective, development of recommendations for use by expert advisory bodies on immunization, and obtaining funding for vaccination. Once these milestones have been achieved, a successful vaccination program requires that a nu...

In this article, levels and changes in health care expenditures for Canada, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States are analyzed. First, the levels and changes in the share of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health are reviewed in terms of the health-to-GDP ratio, nominal health expenditure and GDP growth, and changes in populatio...

The epidemiological transition has provided the theoretical background for the expectation of convergence in mortality patterns. We formally test and reject the convergence hypothesis for a sample of industrialized countries in the period from 1960 to 2008. After a period of convergence in the decade of 1960 there followed a sustained process of divergence with a pronounced increase at the end ...