Question

Do you agree or disagree with the impact of economic policy on the disparity?

Does health disparities have a microeconomic or a macroeconomic impact on health care?

Answer 1

I agree with the impact of economic policy on the disparity.

Inequality is a vicious cycle

“The rich get richer, the poor get poorer” is not just a cliche. The concept behind it is a theoretical process called “wealth concentration.” Under certain conditions, newly created wealth is concentrated in the possession of already-wealthy individuals. The reason is simple: People who already hold wealth have the resources to invest or to leverage the accumulation of wealth, which creates new wealth. The process of wealth concentration arguably makes economic inequality a vicious cycle.

Economic policies

Economic neoliberalism: Market-based” solutions are the most stable and are inherently more sustainable than “top down” publicly funded programmes that rely on the “arbitrary” redistribution of wealth and resources.The Market is the ultimate arbiter of an individual’s worth and it allocates resources to individuals and groups based on a “natural” and immutable process that should not be questioned, perverted or impeded by Government. Because the Market is an impartial and efficient distributor of resources, wealth and income inequality is actually a moral imperative and the people who accrue more resources deserve their wealth, while the “losers” who have not been able to thrive in the Market environment must simply accept their fate because there is no sustainable alternative to the Market-based system.

This means that wealthy, well-educated Elites consider themselves to have achieved their status based solely on their own merit, and they are convinced that anyone else could do what they have done, if they just had enough ambition, drive, focus, etc. (i.e., “we can provide equal opportunity but not equal outcomes”). Having risen to the top of the Meritocracy, these Elites have a certain responsibility, and must abide by a code that is an economic version of “noblesse oblige”. It falls to them properly oversee the orderly, Market-driven operations of the Society (as Thomas Frank writes in his book, Listen, Liberal, this is a tenet of the current Democratic Party).

Advocates of neoliberalism often argue their ideology is helpful in reducing absolute inequality. Some opine neoliberalism itself does not directly generate inequality. Rather, it promotes a free system, which aims to foster economic prosperity. It is the operation of neoliberalism, not the theory itself, which contributes to inequality. Yet, numerous scholars argue that economic neoliberalism is itself a cause of inequality. While it may somehow reduce absolute inequality, it increases relative inequality. According to the economists Howell and Diallo (2007), neoliberal policies in the U.S. led to low wages (30 percent of the working-age population) and inadequate employment (60 percent of the working-age population). The wealth discrepancy between the rich and the poor, usually the working class, hence widens.

Globalisation: Globalisation represents the natural evolution of Market-based economies and, like Darwin’s theory, are accepted as fact by all reasonable and educated people. Like the irresistible “market forces” that drive an economy, globalisation is an inexorable and unstoppable process that can only be embraced, accepted and profited from (hence NAFTA, WTO, TPP). Globalisation will eventually do for the world what the Market does in a nation’s economy: it will allocate resources to the most deserving, and there will be winners and losers on a global level.

Experts think the effects of globalization on inequality are minor when compared to other causes. For example, Lawrence Katz estimates globalization accounts only for 5 to 15 percent of rising inequality. Robert Lawrence, an economist, disputes any such relationship. Instead, technological innovation causes low-skilled jobs to be replaced by machinery in wealthy nations. Rich nations no longer have significant numbers of low-skilled workers that can be affected by competition from poor nations.

Yes, health disparities have a microeconomic or macroeconomic impact on health care.

Health and economic prosperity go hand in hand. In micro and macro data, there is abundant evidence that a wide array of health indicators are positively associated with many different dimensions of economic prosperity. In recent years, growing attention has been focused on the distribution of income in a society as an independent determinant of population health. There are sound theoretical reasons for suggesting that inequality in the distribution of income matters for population health. Given the same level of average income, a more unequal society is more likely to have greater numbers of people living in poverty, both in the absolute and relative senses. Because of the concave nature of the relationship between income and life expectancy (i.e., there are diminishing rates of return to health with rising incomes), this implies that a redistribution of income from the rich to the poor will raise average life expectancy.

The link between nutrition and productivity arguably provides the best documented evidence on interrelationships between health and economic prosperity. The evidence suggests that, along with genotype and environmental influences, diet plays a role in the etiology of many chronic diseases. We focus first, therefore, on nutrition. Substantial strides have been made in our understanding of the links between nutrition and health in low-income settings. Attention has shifted from focusing primarily on inadequate energy or protein intake to incorporating the influence of micronutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc, calcium and several key vitamins.