The Body Economic

June 17, 2013
Can the economic crisis have an effect on our health? Oxford Senior Research leader Stuckler and Stanford epidemiologist Basu offer insight into the economic crisisâincluding the Great Recessionâand its effect on public health, arguing that countries attempt to fix recessions by balancing budgets, but have failed to protect public well-being. They demonstrate how maintaining a healthy populace is intimately entwined with the health of the social environment. Filled with graphs and charts, the book shows how government's investment in social welfare improves the public's health, due to the creation of unemployment programs, pensions, and housing support. Each chapter offers historical facts from the 1930s in United States, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., revealing how the government's mismanagement of the economic crisis has resulted in the public's poor health and an epidemic of diseases. The authors argue that it is the politicians' job to ensure that people's health needs are met, rather than their ability to pay. Societies will prosper when they invest in people's health both in good times and in bad. The question remains: what steps need to be taken to prevent widespread suffering both now and in the future?

May 1, 2013
How budget-cutting responses to recession produce increases in death rates and epidemiclike breakdowns in public health. Stuckler (Senior Research Leader/Oxford Univ.; co-author: Sick Societies: Responding to the Global Challenge of Chronic Disease, 2011) and Basu (Medicine/Prevention Research Center, Stanford Univ.) contrast the "large and long-lasting public health improvements" brought about by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal with the documented effects of the austerity created by the Great Depression. They show how reversing what was well-established and returning to a one-size-fits-all austerity--whether in the form of the shock-therapy privatizations applied in the former Soviet Union or the IMF austerity imposed on the countries of Southeast Asia and the Republic of Korea in 1998--has led to poorer health conditions and an increase in death rates. The life expectancy of working-age males in Russia was reduced from 64 to 57 between 1991 and 1994, and the number of deaths in that age group set the country back demographically at least 20 years. In other areas, the authors examine deaths by suicide and from alcoholism, as well as the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases, which often accompany forced reductions in health programs. Stuckler and Basu also review austerity's effects on the British National Health Service and the effects of the housing crisis on America's health profile. Foreclosures and homelessness also contribute to the spreading of disease--for example, unmaintained, stagnant swimming pools in California have provided a breeding ground for the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus. A dramatic study emphasizing some of the combined consequences of ideological obsessions and bureaucratic thoughtlessness.

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July 1, 2013
Stuckler and Basu, academics and public-health experts, examine how governmental budgets and economic choices affect life and death, as well as resilience and risk, for entire populations. With extensive study on the health effects of global economic policies during the December 2007 recession, they conclude that economies paid a deadly price for austerity in terms of ticks to growth rates, life lost, and avoidable deaths. Instead of austerity, the authors recommend evidence-based policies (stimulus) to protect health during hard times: If administered correctly, these programs don't bust the budget, but . . . boost economic growth and improve public health. Stuckler and Basu ultimately blame the failure of austerity on the economic ideology of those who support small government and free markets over state intervention; they contend that governments that have increased public-sector spending have seen faster economic recoveries, which in turn helps them to grow out of debt. This informative book will add important perspective to the ongoing debate on the consequences of economic policies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)