Poverty, Inequality, and Health: An International Perspective

Abstract

Edited by D. A. Leon and G. Walt., 0–19–263196–9 Oxford University Press, New York, New York (Telephone: 212–726–6000, Fax: 212–726–6443), 2001, 368 pp., paperback $55.00. Geoffrey Rose, in his seminal paper on the causes of sickness in persons and populations (1), contends that international comparisons are critical for the identification of factors that elevate the incidence of disease in populations. Indeed, without comparing disease patterns across populations, Rose argues that the higher the prevalence of causal factors among residents of a population, the more likely that those factors are rendered invisible. As he writes, “The hardest cause to identify is the one that is universally present” (1, p. 33). D. A. Leon and G. Walt, the editors of Poverty, Inequality, and Health: An International Perspective (2), would seemingly agree with Rose's observation, proposing that international comparisons between developed and developing countries enhance our understanding of poverty, inequality, and health, clearly one of the most important and, arguably, one of the most controversial topics in epidemiology and health policy.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 111 citations exist upstream.