This Article Extract Reprint (PDF) Submit a response to this article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My Personal Archive Download to Citation Manager Reprints & Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content

Income & Health

PROLOGUE

Income And Health

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, where we find that the emerging field of the socioeconomic determinants of health has generated a debate that, while nowhere near as old as the questions that occupied Wittgenstein and Popper in 1946, is nearly as heated. Indeed, Sir Michael Marmot, who is a central player in this drama over the link between income and health status, has characterized the combatants to the debate as "brandishing pokers" at one another, apparently with the intent of conjuring the image of Wittgenstein’s famous confrontation with Popper. To take the comparison one step further, Marmot believes that the debate is sustained not only by honest disagreement over key points, but also by the kinds of linguistic muddles that often accompany debates that cross the boundaries of academic disciplines.

The papers that follow offer two views—one belonging to an economist, the other to an epidemiologist—on the link between income and health, the mechanisms that link the two, and the policy solutions that are most likely to result in the desired outcome of improving health opportunities for those who are economically disadvantaged. The authors are towering figures in this field who bring to the debate an abundant store of experience and intellectual power. Angus Deaton is Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Economics. Marmot heads the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health as well as the International Centre for Health and Society at University College London. He was awarded a knighthood in 2000 for "services to epidemiology and understanding health inequalities."

                      What's this?