Re: Re: Re: Re: More privatisation

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Burgess wrote:

> As it happens I am doing something very similar, as part of an
> effort to figure out why personal income _inequality_ is strongly
> (negatively) related to (age-adjusted) mortality rates in US cities,
> but not in Canadian cities. In other words, do more -- and more
> equal -- public goods in Canadian cities (schools, transit,
> libraries, sewers, etc.) mitigate some of the negative effects of
> personal income inequality that prevail in the US?  (Of course,
> personal income itself is also strongly negatively related to
> mortality, but an additional? inequality effect seems to apply over
> the range of income.)
>
> BTW, some good recent work on the relation of income inequality and
> mortality is by Australian epidemiologist John Lynch. He offers a
> "neo-material" explanation for this relation in place of some of the
> 'social capital' ideas (trust, cohesion, civic participation, etc.)
> recently discussed on Pen-L.
>
> If anyone is working on similar points, please contact me to compare notes.

My beloved's uncle is Christopher Jencks. I hear that Jencks is
currently working on the relation between income distribution and
health indicators, and is finding that it doesn't exist. He hasn't
published anything yet, and I haven't had the chance to talk to him
about it, but I'm going to get on the case very soon.

Doug