Why justice is good for our health: The social determinants of health inequalities

Daedalus

Volumn 128, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 215-251

  Daniels, Norman ^a,b   Kennedy, Bruce P ^c   Kawachi, Ichiro ^c,d  

^a TUFTS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b TUFTS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

^c HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH   (United States)

^d HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGE; ANALYTICAL APPROACH; ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; ETHICS; HEALTH; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; HEALTH CARE DELIVERY; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HEALTH STATUS; HUMAN; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; LIFESTYLE; POLICY; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PUBLIC HEALTH; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOECONOMICS; STATISTICS;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH;

AGE FACTORS; BIOETHICS; DELIVERY OF HEALTH CARE; DEMOCRACY; ETHICS; HEALTH; HEALTH CARE RATIONING; HEALTH STATUS; HUMANS; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; INTERNATIONALITY; LIFE STYLE; PUBLIC HEALTH; PUBLIC POLICY; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL VALUES; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; STATISTICS;

EID: 0033185845     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. Louis Rene Villerme, Tableau de l'État Physique et Moral des Ouvriers, vol. 2 (Paris: Renourard, 1840).
2. Cited in Bruce G. Link et al., "Social Epidemiology and the Fundamental Cause Concept: On the Structuring of Effective Cancer Screens by Socioeconomic Status," Milbank Quarterly 76 (1998): 375-402. Throughout, we view disease and disability as departures from (species-typical) normal functioning and view health and normal functioning as equivalent.
3. Michael Marmot, "Social Causes of Social Inequalities in Health," Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Working Paper Series 99.01, January 1999.
4. To avoid additional complexity, in this essay we concentrate on class or socioeconomic inequalities, though many of our points generalize to race and gender inequalities in health as well.
5. Goran Dahlgren and Margaret Whitehead, Policies and Strategies to Promote Social Equity in Health (Stockholm: Institute of Future Studies, 1991).
6. Michaela Benzeval, Ken Judge, and Margaret Whitehead, eds., Tackling Inequalities in Health: An Agenda for Action (London: King's Fund, 1995).
7. Sarah Marchand, Daniel Wikler, and Bruce Landesman, "Class, Health, and Justice," Milbank Quarterly 76 (1998): 449-468.
8. Benzeval, Judge, and Whitehead, eds., Tackling Inequalities in Health: An Agenda for Action, 1-9.
9. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).
10. Norman Daniels, "Health-care Needs and Distributive Justice," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981): 146-179.
11. Daniels, Just Health Care (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
12. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, sec. 12-13;
13. Norman Daniels, "Rawls's Egalitarianism," in Samuel Freeman, ed., Companion to Rawls (in press).
14. Marmot, "Social Causes," 6-7;
15. Michael G. Marmot, "Social Differentials in Health Within and Between Populations," Dædalus 123 (4) (1994): 197-216.
16. Douglas Black et al., Inequalities in Health: The Black Report; The Health Divide (London: Penguin Group, 1988).
17. George Davey-Smith, Martin J. Shipley, and Geoffrey Rose, "Magnitude and Causes of Socioeconomic Differentials in Mortality: Further Evidence from the Whitehall Study," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 44 (1990): 265-270.
18. Gregory Pappas et al., "The Increasing Disparity in Mortality between Socioeconomic Groups in the United States, 1960 and 1986," New England Journal of Medicine 329 (1993): 103-109.
19. Nancy E. Adler et al., "Socioeconomic Status and Health: The Challenge of the Gradient," American Psychologist 49 (1994): 15-24.
20. Davey-Smith, Shipley, and Rose, "Magnitude and Causes of Socioeconomic Differentials in Mortality."
21. Michael G. Marmot et al., "Contribution of Psychosocial Factors to Socioeconomic Differences in Health," Milbank Quarterly 76 (1998): 403-408.
22. Bruce P. Kennedy et al., "Income Distribution, Socioeconomic Status, and Self-rated Health: A U.S. Multi-level Analysis," British Medical Journal 317 (1998): 917-921.
23. John W. Lynch et al., "Income Inequality and Mortality in Metropolitan Areas of the United States," American Journal of Public Health 88 (1998): 1074-1080.
24. Richard G. Wilkinson, "Income Distribution and Life Expectancy," British Medical Journal 304 (1992): 165-168;
25. "The Epidemiological Transition: From Material Scarcity to Social Disadvantage?" Dædalus 123 (4) (1994): 61-77.
26. Wilkinson, "Income Distribution and Life Expectancy";
27. Wilkinson, Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality (London: Routledge, 1996).
28. Bruce P. Kennedy, Ichiro Kawachi, and Deborah Prothrow-Stith, "Income Distribution and Mortality: Test of the Robin Hood Index in the United States," British Medical Journal 312 (1996): 1004-1008. Published erratum appears in British Medical Journal 312 (11 May 1996): 1194.
29. George A. Kaplan et al., "Inequality in Income and Mortality in the United States: Analysis of Mortality and Potential Pathways," British Medical Journal 312 (1996): 999-1003.
30. Lynch et al., "Income Inequality and Mortality in Metropolitan Areas of the United States."
31. Wilkinson, Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality.
32. Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce P. Kennedy, and Richard G. Wilkinson, eds., Income Inequality and Health: A Reader (New York: The New Press, forthcoming).
33. Kaplan et al., "Inequality in Income and Mortality in the United States."
34. Kennedy et al., "Income Distribution, Socioeconomic Status, and Self-rated Health."
35. Kimberly Lochner, "State Income Inequality and Individual Mortality Risk: A Prospective Multilevel Study," Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1999.
36. Kaplan et al., "Inequality in Income and Mortality in the United States."
37. Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy, "Health and Social Cohesion: Why Care about Income Inequality?" British Medical Journal 314 (1997): 1037-1040.
38. Ichiro Kawachi et al., "Women's Status and the Health of Women: A View from the States," Social Science and Medicine 48 (1999): 21-32.
39. Richard G. Wilkinson, Bruce P. Kennedy, and Ichiro Kawachi, "Women's Status and Men's Health in a Culture of Inequality," International Journal of Health Services Research (under review).
40. Kawachi and Kennedy, "Health and Social Cohesion."
41. Ichiro Kawachi et al., "Social Capital, Income Inequality and Mortality," American Journal of Public Health 87 (1997): 1491-1498.
42. Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy, "Income Inequality and Health: Pathways and Mechanisms," Health Services Research 34 (1999): 215-227.
43. The level of interpersonal trust at the state level was gauged by responses to the General Social Surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, which asked citizens questions such as "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?" This approach to measure social trust is the same as the approach adopted by Robert D. Putnam in his work on social capital: "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy 6 (1995): 65-78.
44. Margaret Whitehead, "The Concepts and Principles of Equity and Health," International Journal of Health Services 22 (1992): 429-445.
45. Dahlgren and Whitehead, Policies and Strategies to Promote Social Equity in Health.
46. Paula Braveman, Monitoring Equity in Health: A Policy-oriented Approach in Low-and Middle-income Countries (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1999).
47. Daniel Wikler, "Persuasion and Coercion for Health: Issues in Government Efforts to Change Life Style," Milbank Quarterly 56 (1978): 303-338.
48. John E. Roemer, Equality of Opportunity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
49. Joshua Cohen, "Democratic Equality," Ethics 99 (1989): 727-754.
50. Daniels, Just Health Care.
51. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
52. A careful discussion of Rawls's argument for the Difference Principle and the extensive critical literature it has generated is beyond the scope of this essay. It is important, however, to distinguish Rawls's own social contract argument from the many informal and intuitive reformulations of it. See Brian Barry, Theories of Justice (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 213-234;
53. Gerald A. Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 13, ed. G. B. Petersen (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992), 262-329.
54. Gerald A. Cohen, "The Pareto Argument for Inequality," Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (Winter 1995): 160-185.
55. Cohen, "Democratic Equality," 727-751.
56. Daniels, "Rawls's Egalitarianism."
57. Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
58. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democratic Disagreement (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995).
59. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 62;
60. Political Liberalism, chap. 5.
61. This example is taken from Joshua Cohen, "The Pareto Argument," unpublished manuscript.
62. Daniels, "Rawls's Egalitarianism."
63. Daniels, Just Health Care.
64. Norman Daniels, Donald W. Light, and Ronald L. Caplan, Benchmarks of Fairness for Health Care Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 41-44.
65. Norman Daniels, "Mental Disabilities, Equal Opportunity, and the ADA," in Richard J. Bonnie and John Monahan, eds., Mental Disorder, Work Disability, and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 282-297.
66. Daniels, Just Health Care, chaps. 7-8.
67. Cohen ("Incentives, Inequality, and Community") has argued that a strict interpretation of the Difference Principle would allow few incentive-based inequalities;
68. for a more permissive view, see Daniels, "Rawls's Egalitarianism."
69. Daniels, Just Health Care, chap. 7.
70. Kenneth Arrow, "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care," American Economic Review 53 (1963): 941-973.
71. Amartya K. Sen, "Equality of What?" in Sterling M. McMurrin, ed., Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
72. Amartya K. Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).
73. Norman Daniels, "Equality of What: Welfare, Resources, or Capabilities?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (1990): 273-296.
74. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 243-251.
75. Rawls does suggest, since fair equality of opportunity is given priority over the Difference Principle, that within the index, we can assume opportunity has a heavier weighting. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 93.
76. James Fishkin, Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983).
77. Norman Daniels and James E. Sabin, "Limits to Health Care: Fair Procedures, Democratic Deliberation, and the Legitimacy Problem for Insurers," Philosophy and Public Affairs 26 (1997): 303-350.
78. Richard J. Arneson, "Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare," Philosophical Studies 54 (1988): 79-95.
79. Gerald A. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," Ethics 99 (1989): 906-944.
80. Roemer, Equality of Opportunity, chap. 12-13.
81. For Sen's account, see Sen, Inequality Reexamined, chaps. 1-5, 9.
82. For the account offered by Daniels and others, see Daniels, "Equality of What: Welfare, Resources, or Capabilities?";
83. A. Buchanan et al., From Chance to Choice: Genetics and the Just Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, in press).
84. Elizabeth Anderson, "What is the Point of Equality?" Ethics 109 (2) (January 1999): 287-337;
85. cf. Daniels, "Rawls's Egalitarianism."
86. John N. Lavis and Gregory L. Stoddart, "Can We Have Too Much Health Care?" Dædalus 123 (4) (1994): 43-60.
87. John N. Lavis and Gregory L. Stoddart, "Can We Have Too Much Health Care?" Dædalus 123 (4) (1994): 43-60. Ibid.
88. Lawrence J. Schweinhart, Helen V. Barnes, and David P. Weikart, Significant Benefits: The High/Scope Project Perry Preschool Study through Age 27 (Ypsilnati, Mich.: The High/Scope Press, 1993).
89. Donald Acheson et al., Report of the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (London: Stationery Office, 1998).
90. Nancy E. Moss and Karen Carver, "The Effect of WIC and Medicaid on Infant Mortality in the United States," American Journal of Public Health 88 (1998): 1354-1361.
91. Michael G. Marmot et al., "Contribution of Job Control and Other Risk Factors to Social Variations in Coronary Heart Disease Incidence," Lancet 350 (1997): 235-239.
92. Robert A. Karasek and Töres Theorell, Health Work (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 83-157.
93. Acheson et al., Report of the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health, 48-50.
94. Kawachi et al., Income Inequality and Health.
95. Kawachi and Kennedy, "Health and Social Cohesion"; "Income Inequality and Health."
96. Kim Quaile Hill, Jan E. Leighley, and Angela Hinton-Andersson, "Lower-class Mobilization and Policy Linkage in the U.S. States," American Journal of Political Science 39 (1995): 75-86.
97. Kawachi et al., Income Inequality and Health, xxviii-xxx.
98. Amartya K. Sen, "Mortality as an Indicator of Economic Success and Failure," The Economic Journal 108 (1998): 1-25.
99. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 183-187.
100. Norman Daniels, "Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics," Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979): 256-282.
101. Daniels, Justice and Justification, 333-352.