Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Wealth, health, and democracy in East Asia and Latin America

2010; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 48; Issue: 01 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.48-0397

1943-5975

James W. McGuire,

Global Health Care Issues

What are the causes of national development?Situated in the intersection between political science and public health, the author takes a "development-as-capabilities" perspective.He defines development as the capacity to avoid premature mortality."To live the life one chooses, one has to be alive" (15).The main finding of the book is that both policy and politics matter for explaining the probability of early death.In terms of policy, the public provision and financing of government programs that provide free basic health care to uninsured people decreases the probability of infant mortality.On the politics side, more years of democracy (measured through polity IV) promote the existence of the aforementioned mortality-reducing social services.The research includes both large-N analysis of 105 developing countries in the year 1990 and case studies of eight middleincome societies in Latin America and East Asia,