The Economist Magazine quotes CGD vice president for programs and operations, and senior fellow Ruth Levine on a new World Health Organization report that examines inequality and health.
From the article:
"But for anyone who is willing to look past the report’s ideological slant, there are plenty of things in it that deserve to be taken seriously. Ruth Levine of the Centre for Global Development, an American think-tank, describes the manifesto as imperfect but still useful. On one hand, she notes, the report fails to provide any ranking for its laundry list of laudable aims. But it makes a worthwhile point, in her view, by urging a rediscovery of an earlier view of global health that was more prevalent before 2000. That was the year when a different WHO-inspired panel—convened by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University—put a controversial emphasis on the way in which poor health leads to bad economic performances by individuals and nations.
With the latest report, says Ms Levine, “we can see the pendulum swinging back.” In other words, there is renewed stress on the way that poverty and inequality lead to worse health. Julio Frenk, a former Mexican health minister now working with the Gates Foundation, a charity, says the new report offers a way out of a “sterile debate” about whether poor health causes poverty, or vice versa. What about the other possible flaw in the new report—that it downplays the link between income (as opposed to inequality) and health? Adam Wagstaff, a World Bank economist, says he still believes income “is causal” when it comes to health—so that faster economic growth is likely to benefit the health of society as a whole, even if income inequality is constant. As an example of the benign effects of money, he cites data from South Africa, where the health of older people improved after they started receiving pensions at the age of 65."