Demographic methods and their application in the social and health sciences

This chapter presents a model which attempts to delineate the beneficial as well as the detrimental aspects of economic growth as they tend to influence health. The long-term, and apparently beneficial, aspects of economic growth include growth in real per capita income and income distribution via welfare transfer payments, and educational level. The chapter is concerns the impact of industrialization and economic growth on the health of people in industrialized societies. A question of primary practical and scientific importance at the time concerns the role of economic development in health. This question bears not only on the conditions of populations in developing economies, but increasingly on those in the highly industrialized countries as well. Economic instabilities are characterized by a particular relation to the ordinary processes of economic growth which are typical of the affluent industrialized countries based on market economies.