Human Disease: Effects of Economic Development

Colin D Butler, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
John Powles, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Anthony J McMichael, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

Published online: February 2012

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003292.pub2

Since palaeolithic times economic development has had mixed effects on the burden of human disease and injury. Pre‐modern agrarian populations with universal early marriage probably experienced the least favourable levels of health and survival, in many cases worse than their hunter‐gatherer ancestors. Over recent centuries, favourable effects of economic development on health have been ascendant. Child and adult survival have improved markedly in recent decades in most developing countries. However, many important health problems arising from economic development remain unsolved, including tobacco addiction, physical inactivity and obesity, to environmental contamination and disruption (including, now, systemic environmental changes such as climate change). The improvement in global food security has also stalled. Unless corrected, these interacting issues may undermine global public health.

Key Concepts:

  • Economic development has mixed but generally positive health effects, especially in recent centuries.
  • Economic development involves several transitions – agricultural, technological, industrial, demographic, nutritional, epidemiological and sustainability.
  • Knowledge is central to the epidemiological and demographic transitions.
  • These transitions are causally intertwined in complex ways.
  • Development can lead to transitional ‘overshoot’, for example from high to low fertility, from under to over caloric intake and from under to overconsumption of environmental resources.
  • Global population health is threatened by declining environmental health determinants, which risks a consequential decline in social health determinants.
  • Dominant measures of economic development omit negative externalities (adverse effects which impinge on public goods, other people, or future generations), thus providing excessively optimistic progress indicators.
  • There is an urgent need for a ‘sustainability transition’, entailing a shift to renewable energy, ecological conservation and enhanced equity.
  • This could be assisted by new metrics of economic growth and human well‐being.
  • There is a possibility that paths of economic development will continue to diverge, leading to an ‘enclave’ world with sections of the human population being ‘left behind’ whilst progress continues elsewhere.

Keywords: child survival; climate change; culture; development; education; future; health; sustainability; transition

Figure 1. Indian demography. The figure shows estimated crude birth rate (CBR), crude death rate (CDR) and population 1881–1991, with projections to 2050. Net reproduction rate (NRR). Note: census‐based estimates smooth out the true year‐to‐year variation. Sources: Davis (1951); Bos et al. (1992); World Bank (2000).
Figure 2. Life expectancy in England since the seventeenth century. Squares, females; diamonds, males. Sources: Wrigley et al. (1997), Tables 6.21, 6.27; Official life tables for England for 1850–1930s; and for England and Wales after the 1930s. The gap in the early nineteenth century is shown to distinguish two datasets. From about 1840 because the data are national; before that the data estimates are based of English rural population.
Figure 3. Failure of hunger targets. Between 1970 and 1996 (large symbols) due mainly to the success of the Green Revolution, the percentage of people classified by the FAO as hungry declined sharply, though the improvement in absolute numbers was less. In 1996 and again in 2000 ambitious hunger targets were set for 2015, both of which may have seemed credible at the time, by simple extrapolation of the trend between 1970 and 1996. In fact, world hunger has deteriorated in absolute terms since 1996, whereas in percentage terms it has scarcely changed. The global financial crisis caused a large increase in hunger in 2009 (points circled). Meanwhile, world food prices in 2011 now exceed that of 2008, and world hunger is likely to increase again (Raw data, FAO).
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Article Title: Human Disease: Effects of Economic Development
 
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Butler, Colin D, Powles, John, and McMichael, Anthony J(Feb 2012) Human Disease: Effects of Economic Development. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003292.pub2]