OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine the impact that national income and income inequality in high and low income countries have on the relationship between dental caries and sugar consumption. METHODS An ecological study design was used in this study of 73 countries. The mean decayed, missing, or filled permanent teeth (DMFT) for 12-year-old children were obtained from the WHO Oral...

BACKGROUND Income inequality and national wealth are strong determinants for health, but few studies have systematically investigated their influence on mortality across the early life-course, particularly outside the high-income world. METHODS We performed cross-sectional regression analyses of the relationship between income inequality (national Gini coefficient) and national wealth (Gross ...

Background: Investment in science is vital for the development and well-being of societies. This study aims to assess the scientific productivity of countries by quantifying their publication of systematic reviews taking the gross national income per capita (GNIPC) into account. Methods: Medline and ISI Web of Science were searched for systematic reviews published between 1st January 2006 an...

In 1618, Reformation and the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation engulfed Europe in a complex war that lasted until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. In a similar manner, the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)1 in 1974, and the ensuing growth of managed care, have engulfed health care in a holy war between insurers, physicians, and patients over the control of medi...

The distribution of gross income net of taxes and transfers – or equivalently consumption – is generally considered a reasonable approximation of the distribution of well-being in the society. One typically observes differing trends in the distribution of gross incomes across countries or within the same country over time. Where do these inequalities originate from? Considering a simple model w...

The new children’s allowances1 (“child benefit”) program in the United Kingdom recently completed its 3-year phase-in period, begun in 1977. The new program is the first major reform of family support since the introduction of children’s allowances in 1946. It merges two kinds of allowances that previously benefited families with childrenthe taxable social security cash payments made to all fam...

The present paper gives an overview of the theory of green national accounting. Three purposes of green national accounting (measurement of welfare equivalent income, sustainable income, or net social profit) and two measures (Green NNP and wealth equivalent income) are considered. Under the assumption of no exogenous technological progress, Green NNP is shown to equal wealth equivalent income ...

This paper aims to add to existing research on poverty and regional diversity by exploring the extent of poverty in small regional areas. Poverty analysis on a regional basis has previously been severely hampered by a lack of suitable data. The unit record files from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) household expenditure and income surveys allow analysis at state and very broad regiona...

The paper by Lynch et al is intended to cast doubt on the importance to health of social capital, relative income and psychosocial pathways, and to gain support for a view of the continued importance of absolute income and of “neomaterial” factors. Before answering specific points I should draw attention to two new studies that support the importance of relative income over absolute income in r...