Rates and states: reflections on the health of nations

Abstract

The Health of Nations. Why Inequality is Harmful to Your Health.Kawachi I, Kennedy BP. New York: The New Press, 2002, pp. 232 (HB), $25.95. ISBN: 1 565 84582 X. Writing a book titled The Health of Nations1 is surely a daunting and ambitious task considering it is only one consonant removed from the popular title of Adam Smith’s famous Wealth of Nations.2 Nevertheless, Harvard social epidemiologists Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce Kennedy revel in the challenge and have managed to integrate a vast amount of information in an attempt to help us better understand why social inequality in its various forms can be damaging to health, happiness, and the quality of human existence. This book is primarily about the goals of economic development and how we should evaluate its successes and failures. In this sense the authors are onto something fundamentally important. Kawachi and Kennedy question whether Americans are happier or healthier as a result of all their accumulation and consumption of goods and services. They answer no. More snappily, they suggest that ‘chasing the American Dream can be hazardous to your well-being‘ (ref. 1, p. 37), and that ‘striving after fame and fortune should come with a government health warning’ (ref. 1, p. 37

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