Now showing items 1-20 of 29

    • Thumbnail

      Equality of What? 

      Sen, Amartya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 1979)

      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 ...
    • Thumbnail

      What does Equity in Health Mean? 

      Pereira, João (Journal of Social Policy, 1993)

      Up until very recently, the international debate on health inequality tended to disregard the issue of specifying equity objectives precisely. This was unfortunate, given the importance of normative analysis for understanding why people care about social justice in the field of health; the extent to which specific types of inequality are compatible with equity; how the concept should be measured; and how rational policies may be formulated and monitored. This article critically appraises six well established approaches to defining equity—egality, ...
    • Thumbnail

      From income inequality to economic inequality. 

      Sen, Amartya (Southern Economic Journal, 1997)

      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.
    • Thumbnail

      Chapter 34 Equity in health care finance and delivery 

      Wagstaff, Adam; van Doorslaer, Eddy (Handbook of Health Economics, 2000)

      The paper surveys the economics literature on equity in health care financing and delivery. The focus is, for the most part, on empirical work, especially that involving intemational and temporal comparisons. There is, however, some discussion of the concept and definition of equity. The empirical sections cover the literature on equity in health care financing (progressivity and horizontal equity of health care financing arrangements), equity in health care delivery (horizontal equity in the sense of treating persons in equal need similarly), ...
    • Thumbnail

      Defining equity in health 

      Braveman, P (Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2003)

      Study objective: To propose a definition of health equity to guide operationalisation and measurement, and to discuss the practical importance of clarity in defining this concept. Design: Conceptual discussion. Setting, Patients/Participants, and Main results: not applicable. Conclusions: For the purposes of measurement and operationalisation, equity in health is the absence of systematic disparities in health (or in the major social determinants of health) between groups with different levels of underlying social advantage/disadvantage—that ...
    • Thumbnail

      The Concern for Health Equity 

      Sudhir Anand; Fabienne Peter; Amartya Sen (Oxford University Press 2004, 2004)
    • Thumbnail

      World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development 

      World Bank Publications (World Bank Publications, 2005)

      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.
    • Thumbnail

      HEALTH DISPARITIES AND HEALTH EQUITY: Concepts and Measurement 

      Braveman, Paula (Annual Review of Public Health, 2006)

      There is little consensus about the meaning of the terms “health disparities,” “health inequalities,” or “health equity.” The definitions can have important practical consequences, determining the measurements that are monitored by governments and international agencies and the activities that will be supported by resources earmarked to address health disparities/inequalities or health equity. This paper aims to clarify the concepts of health disparities/inequalities (used interchangeably here) and health equity, focusing on the implications of ...
    • Thumbnail

      Health Inequities and the Social Determinants of Health 

      Rogers, Wendy (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2006)

      The health of individuals and populations is influenced by many variables. These include genetics and biology, but perhaps more important than these are the social determinants of health. The social, political and economic circumstances in which people live their lives are critical in determining how long they live and with what burden of ill health. These differences are very marked between countries, for example a 15-year-old boy in Lesotho has about a 10% chance of living until the age of 60, compared with a 15-year-old boy in Sweden who has ...
    • Thumbnail

      10 best resources on ... health equity 

      Gwatkin, D. R (Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2007)

      An astute bureaucratic pundit named Rufus Miles once observed that ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’ (Miles 1978). This ‘Miles Law’ deserves to be kept centrally in mind when considering not only traditional bureaucratic behaviour, but also health equity; for one's judgment about what's ‘best’ in the health equity area is unavoidably shaped by his/her institutional experience, background and interests.Rather than challenge such an unfortunately well-established reality, better for an author to admit at the outset just where (s)he has ...
    • Thumbnail

      Health inequities and social justice: The moral foundations of public health 

      Faden, R. R.; Powers, M. (Bundesgesundheitsblatt - Gesundheitsforschung - Gesundheitsschutz, 2008)

      Recently we argued that social justice is concerned with human well-being, which is best understood as involving plural, irreducible dimensions, each of which represents something of independent moral significance. Health is one of these distinct dimensions of well-being, as is personal security, the development and exercise of cognitive capacities for reasoning, living under conditions of social respect, developing and sustaining deep personal attachments, and being able to lead self-determining lives. In this paper, we address why considerations ...
    • Thumbnail

      Equity Action Framework 

      Unknown author (Race forward, 2009)
    • type-icon

      Regional strategy on health system strengthening and primary health care 

      Unknown author (Manila : WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, 2010)
    • Thumbnail

      Combating poverty and inequality: structural change, social policy and politics 

      Bangura, Yusuf (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 2010)

      Poverty reduction is a central feature of the international development agenda and contemporary poverty reduction strategies increasingly focus on “targeting the poor”, yet poverty and inequality remain intractable foes. Combating Poverty and Inequality argues that this is because many current approaches to reducing poverty and inequality fail to consider key institutional, policy and political dimensions that may be both causes of poverty and inequality, and obstacles to their reduction. Moreover, when a substantial proportion of a country’s ...
    • Thumbnail

      Child Poverty and Inequality: New Perspectives 

      Ortiz, Isabel; Moreira Daniels, Louise; Engilbertsdóttir, Solrun (2012)

      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 ...
    • Thumbnail

      HEALTH, VITAL GOALS, AND CENTRAL HUMAN CAPABILITIES 

      Venkatapuram, Sridhar (Bioethics, 2013)

      I argue for a conception of health as a person’s ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free-standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt’s theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite its strengths I transform Nordenfelt’s argument in order to ...
    • Thumbnail

      The Normative Dimensions of Health Disparities 

      Ward, Andrew; Johnson, Pamela Jo; O'Brien, Mollie (Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, 2013)

      Understanding what conditions must be satisfied for a health inequality to be a health inequity (disparity) is crucial for health policy makers. The failure to understand what constitutes a health inequity, and confusing health inequalities with health inequities threatens the successful creation of health policies by diverting needed attention and resources away from addressing health inequalities that are health inequities. More generally, the failure threatens to undercut our ability to tell what research is relevant to the creation of health ...
    • Thumbnail

      Piketty’s Inequality Story in Six Charts 

      Cassidy, John (The New Yorker, 2014)
    • Thumbnail

      The political origins of health inequity: prospects for change 

      Ottersen, Ole Petter; Dasgupta, Jashodhara; Blouin, Chantal; Buss, Paulo; Chongsuvivatwong, Virasakdi; Frenk, Julio; Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko; Gawanas, Bience P; Giacaman, Rita; Gyapong, John; Leaning, Jennifer; Marmot, Michael; McNeill, Desmond; Mongella, Gertrude I; Moyo, Nkosana; Møgedal, Sigrun; Ntsaluba, Ayanda; Ooms, Gorik; Bjertness, Espen; Lie, Ann Louise; Moon, Suerie; Roalkvam, Sidsel; Sandberg, Kristin I; Scheel, Inger B (The Lancet - University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health, 2014)

      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 ...
    • Thumbnail

      Health, Disability and the Capability Approach: An Introduction 

      Prah Ruger, Jennifer; Mitra, Sophie (Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 2015)

      This special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities focuses on two areas of substantial and growing importance to the human development and capability approach: disability and health. The research on disability, health and the capability approach has been diverse in the topics it covers, and the conceptual frameworks and methodologies it uses, beginning over a decade and a half ago in health (Ruger 1998) and more than a decade ago in disability (Baylies 2002).1 We are pleased to share a set of articles in these two areas. ...