IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v61y2005i4p755-765.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evolutionary, historical and political economic perspectives on health and disease

Author

Listed:
  • Armelagos, George J.
  • Brown, Peter J.
  • Turner, Bethany

Abstract

The origin and rise of social inequalities that are a feature of the post-Neolithic society play a major role in the pattern of disease in prehistoric and contemporary populations. We use the concept of epidemiological transition to understand changing ecological relationships between humans, pathogens and other disease insults. With the Paleolithic period as a baseline, we begin with ecological and social relationships that minimized the impact of infectious disease. Paleolithic populations would have retained many of the pathogens that they shared with their primate ancestors and would have been exposed to zoonoses that they picked up as they adapted to a foraging existence. The sparse mobile populations would have precluded the existence of endemic infectious disease. About 10,000 years ago, the shift to an agricultural subsistence economy created the first epidemiological transition, marked by the emergence of infections, a pattern that has continued to the present. Beginning about a century ago, some populations have undergone a second epidemiological transition in which public health measures, improved nutrition and medicine resulted in declines in infectious disease and a rise in non-infectious, chronic and degenerative diseases. Human populations are entering the third epidemiological transition in which there is a reemergence of infectious diseases previously thought to be under control, and the emergence of novel diseases. Many of the emerging and reemerging pathogens are antibiotic resistant and some are multi-antibiotic resistant. Inequality continues to widen within and between societies, accelerating the spread of emerging and reemerging diseases.

Suggested Citation

  • Armelagos, George J. & Brown, Peter J. & Turner, Bethany, 2005. "Evolutionary, historical and political economic perspectives on health and disease," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 755-765, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:61:y:2005:i:4:p:755-765
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00453-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton, 2001. "Relative Deprivation, Inequality, and Mortality," NBER Working Papers 8099, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Farmer, Paul, 1997. "Social scientists and the new tuberculosis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 347-358, February.
    3. Watts, S. & Khallaayoune, K. & Bensefia, R. & Laamrani, H. & Gryseels, B., 1998. "The study of human behavior and schistosomiasis transmission in an irrigated area in Morocco," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(6), pages 755-765, March.
    4. Meredeth Turshen, 1977. "The Political Ecology of Disease," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 45-60, April.
    5. Coburn, David, 2000. "Income inequality, social cohesion and the health status of populations: the role of neo-liberalism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 135-146, July.
    6. Hawe, Penelope & Shiell, Alan, 2000. "Social capital and health promotion: a review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 871-885, September.
    7. repec:pri:cheawb:deaton_relative_deprivation.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Mayer, Jonathan D., 2000. "Geography, ecology and emerging infectious diseases," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(7-8), pages 937-952, April.
    9. Shaw, Mary & Orford, Scott & Brimblecombe, Nicola & Dorling, Daniel, 2000. "Widening inequality in mortality between 160 regions of 15 European countries in the early 1990s," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(7-8), pages 1047-1058, April.
    10. Jeffrey Sachs & Pia Malaney, 2002. "The economic and social burden of malaria," Nature, Nature, vol. 415(6872), pages 680-685, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Margaret Weden, 2007. "Twentieth Century U.S. Racial Inequalities in Mortality Changes in the Average Age of Death and the Variability in the Age of Death for White and non-White Men and Women, 1900-2002," Working Papers 497, RAND Corporation.
    2. Margaret M. Weden, 2007. "Twentieth Century U.S. Racial Inequalities in Mortality Changes in the Average Age of Death and the Variability in the Age of Death for White and non-White Men and Women, 1900-2002," Working Papers WR-497, RAND Corporation.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shortt, S. E. D., 2004. "Making sense of social capital, health and policy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 11-22, October.
    2. Viladrich, Anahí, 2012. "Beyond welfare reform: Reframing undocumented immigrants’ entitlement to health care in the United States, a critical review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(6), pages 822-829.
    3. Chakraborty, Shankha & Papageorgiou, Chris & Pérez Sebastián, Fidel, 2010. "Diseases, infection dynamics, and development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 859-872, October.
    4. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    5. Banerjee, Albert & Daly, Tamara & Armstrong, Pat & Szebehely, Marta & Armstrong, Hugh & Lafrance, Stirling, 2012. "Structural violence in long-term, residential care for older people: Comparing Canada and Scandinavia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 390-398.
    6. Rok Spruk & Mitja Kovac, 2018. "Inefficient Growth," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 9(2).
    7. Connie E Chen & C Taylor Gilliland & Jay Purcell & Sandeep P Kishore, 2010. "The Silent Epidemic of Exclusive University Licensing Policies on Compounds for Neglected Diseases and Beyond," PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(3), pages 1-4, March.
    8. Brian Piper, 2014. "Factor-Specific Productivity," Working Papers 1401, Sam Houston State University, Department of Economics and International Business.
    9. Eric Maskin & Célestin Monga & Josselin Thuilliez & Jean-Claude Berthélemy, 2019. "The economics of malaria control in an age of declining aid," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-5, December.
    10. Janz, Teresa & Augsburg, Britta & Gassmann, Franziska & Nimeh, Zina, 2023. "Leaving no one behind: Urban poverty traps in Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    11. Paul Cross & Rhiannon T Edwards & Philip Nyeko & Gareth Edwards-Jones, 2009. "The Potential Impact on Farmer Health of Enhanced Export Horticultural Trade between the U.K. and Uganda," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 6(5), pages 1-18, April.
    12. Rossi, Pauline & Villar, Paola, 2020. "Private health investments under competing risks: Evidence from malaria control in Senegal," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    13. HEPP, Ralf, 2010. "CONSEQUENCES OF DEBT RELIEF INITIATIVES IN THE 1990s," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 10(1).
    14. Cheryl Teelucksingh & Blake Poland, 2011. "Energy Solutions, Neo-Liberalism, and Social Diversity in Toronto, Canada," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-18, January.
    15. Anastasia Litina, 2016. "Natural land productivity, cooperation and comparative development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 351-408, December.
    16. Josselin Thuilliez, 2007. "Malaria and Primary Education: A Cross-Country Analysis on Primary Repetition and Completion Rates," Post-Print halshs-00144666, HAL.
    17. Alexander Maas & Liang Lu, 2021. "Elections have Consequences: Partisan Politics may be Literally Killing Us," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 45-56, January.
    18. Alexandru Cojocaru, 2016. "Does Relative Deprivation Matter in Developing Countries: Evidence from Six Transition Economies," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 735-756, February.
    19. McNeill, Lorna Haughton & Kreuter, Matthew W. & Subramanian, S.V., 2006. "Social Environment and Physical activity: A review of concepts and evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 1011-1022, August.
    20. Godoy, Ricardo & Byron, Elizabeth & Reyes-García, Victoria & Vadez, Vincent & Leonard, William R. & Apaza, Lilian & Huanca, Tomás & Pérez, Eddy & Wilkie, David, 2005. "Income inequality and adult nutritional status: Anthropometric evidence from a pre-industrial society in the Bolivian Amazon," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 907-919, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:61:y:2005:i:4:p:755-765. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.