This section provides a brief summary of the main ways in which health in-equalities are conceptualized, particularly in terms of the indicators used to stratify health. It is by no means a comprehensive account but rather considers the ways in which researchers focusing on the UK have tended to conceptualize health inequalities over the past 30 years and some of the key chalenges to these approaches (critiques which are developed later in this book).

The World Development Report 2006: Equity and Opportunitypresents a social development strategy organized around the themes of social inclusion, cohesion, and accountability. It examines equality of opportunities--a potentially important factor affecting both the workings of the investment environment and the empowerment of the poor--by building on and extending existing accountability frameworks presented in the 2005Report.

The 21st century starts with vast inequalities for children in terms of income, access to food, water, health, education, housing, or employment for their families. Half of the world’s children are below the poverty line of $2 a day and suffer from multiple deprivations and violations to basic human rights. More than 22,000 children die each day, and most of their deaths are preventable. This volume presents some of the critical acknowledged voices to move a necessary agenda forward. It explains multidimensional poverty measurements, describes ...

Well-being is not just a question of the wealth or pleasure that a person has; it is a question of how people manage to live their lives and the ability they have to do certain things that are important to them. This was the argument put forward by Professor Amartya Sen in 1979. In his seminal Tanner Lecture – ‘Equality of What?’, Sen unites economics and philosophy to explore how a person’s well-being might best be measured. It was the first in a series of writings in which he developed his capability approach. This focuses on the actual capability ...

Focus must be shifted from income inequality to economic inequality because of the presence of causal influences on individual well-being and freedom that are economic in nature but cannot be expounded by simple statistics of incomes and commodity holdings. Attention must be given to heterogeneous magnitudes. Moreover, there is a need for the derivation of partial orderings based on explicit or implicit public acceptance.

This report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation aims to stimulate discussion and promote greater consensus about the meaning of health equity and the implications of acting on it. The goal of the report is to identify essential elements to guide effective action rather than to encourage all practitioners to use the same words to define health equity. The report notes that definitions can matter and that, in the case of health equity, clarity is important, especially given that working towards equity is a struggle that must engage diverse ...

Despite large gains in health over the past few decades, the distribution of health risks worldwide remains extremely and unacceptably uneven. Although the health sector has a crucial role in addressing health inequalities, its efforts often come into conflict with powerful global actors in pursuit of other interests such as protection of national security, safeguarding of sovereignty, or economic goals. This is the starting point of The Lancet–University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health. With globalisation, health inequity ...

Th e Equity Action Framework1 is designed to support individuals and groups that want to advance racial equity in early childhood systems. Th e goal of a racial equity approach is to develop policies, practices, and programs that provide opportunities, promote fairness and access, and remediate racial inequities. Whether working at national, state, county, or municipal levels of government, in private-public partnerships, community organizations, foundations or other entities, the Equity Action Framework provides an intentional process for ...