This article studies the causes of China’s Great Famine, during which 16.5 to 45 million individuals perished in rural areas. We document that average rural food retention during the famine was too high to generate a severe famine without rural inequality in food availability; that there was significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions; and that rural mortality rates were...

Indirect estimates of instantaneous natural mortality rate (M) are widely used in stock assessment and fi sheries management. They are essentially a form of meta-analysis, in which prior information on M and key life history parameters from a variety of stocks is used to estimate M for the stock in question. In this study we report indirect estimates of M for arrowtooth fl ounder (Atheresthes s...

BACKGROUND The purpose was to develop and test a population health measure that combines mean health outcomes and inequalities into a single GDP-like metric to help policymakers measure population health performance on both dimensions in one metric. METHODS The Population Health Performance Index is a weighted average of a mean index and an inequality index according to the user's inequality ...

We use data from the German Federal Statistical Office on population counts, births, deaths and income to study development of socio-economic inequality in mortality rates 1990 2015 for different age groups both genders. Ranking 401 districts by average disposable per capita, we observe large inequalities district-level 1990, which had almost disappeared, or at least been flattened considerably...

We develop a model of induced innovation where research effort is a function of the death rate, and thus the potential to reduce deaths in the population. We also consider potential social consequences that arise from this form of induced innovation based on differences in disease prevalence across population subgroups (i.e. race). Our model yields three empirical predictions. First, initial de...