Health and wealth are the two most important components of well-being. Rankings of well-being based on income will differ from more comprehensive rankings depending on the way that income and health are related. There are strong bidirectional causal links between income and health so that we...

In spite of India’s rapid economic growth, there has been a sustained decline in per capita calorie consumption during the last twenty-five years. While the decline has been largest among better-off households, it has taken place throughout the range of household per capita total expenditure....

I present a model of mortality and income which attempts to integrate the “gradient,” the negative relationship between income and mortality, with the Wilkinson hypothesis, that income inequality poses a risk to health. I postulate that individual health is negatively affected by relative...

This paper explores the relationship between adult heights and the distribution of income across populations of individuals. There is a long literature that examines the relationship between mean adult heights and living standards. If adult height is set by the balance between food intake and...

We investigate the childhood determinants of adult height in populations, focusing on the respective roles of income and of disease. We develop a model of selection and scarring, in which the early life burden of nutrition and disease is not only responsible for mortality in childhood but also...

We investigate age-specific mortality in Britain and the United States since 1950. Neither trends in income nor in income inequality provide plausible explanations. Britain and the US had different patterns of income growth but similar patterns of mortality decline. Patterns of income inequality...

In spite of India’s rapid economic growth, there has been a sustained decline in per capita calorie consumption during the last twenty-five years. While the decline has been largest among better-off households, it has taken place throughout the range of household per capita total expenditure....

This paper presents a descriptive account of health and economic status in India and South Africa – countries in very different positions in the international hierarchy of life expectancy and income. The paper emphasizes the lack of any simple and reliable relationship between health and...

People in poor countries live shorter lives than people in rich countries so that, if we scale income by some index of health, there is more inequality in the world than if we consider income alone. Such international inequalities in life expectancy decreased for many years after 1945, and the...

I explore the connection between health and inequality in both poor and rich countries. My primary focus is on the relationship between income inequality and mortality, but I also discuss the effects of inequalities in other, often more important, dimensions. I discuss a range of mechanisms,...