The Influence Of Income On Health: Views Of An Epidemiologist money really matter? Or is it a marker for something else?

Abstract

Income is related to health in three ways: through the gross na- tional product of countries, the income of individuals, and the income inequali- ties among rich nations and among geographic areas. A central question is the degree to which these associations reflect a causal association. If so, redistribu- tion of income would improve health. This paper discusses two ways in which income could be causally related to health: through a direct effect on the material conditions necessary for biological survival, and through an effect on social participation and opportunity to control life circumstances. The fewer goods and services are provided publicly by the community, the more important individual income is for health. Under present U.S. circumstances, a policy of counteracting growing income inequalities through the tax and benefit system and of public provision appears justified.

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 — 61 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.