The Body Economic - Couverture souple

Stuckler, David; Basu, Sanjay

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 144342045X ISBN 13 : 9781443420457

Editeur : HarperCollins Publishers, 2014

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

A powerful and important contribution to our future. Stuckler and Basu use statistics not to dehumanize people, but to bring them to life (Ha-Joon Chang, author of '23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism')

Explosive ... powerful. Backed by a decade of research, and based on reams of publicly available data... The Body Economic should come as a broadside, morally armour-plated and data-reinforced (Jon Henley Guardian)

A powerful indictment of the unnecessary suffering and rising mortality rates associated with austerity policies unsoftened by remedial social programmes. I hope the finance ministers read it, and try mixing with the ordinary people, who are the only ones who can bring about economic recovery (Harry Eyres Financial Times)

A surprisingly readable book with a compassionate tone. The inclusion of stories about ordinary individuals affected by austerity lends it a poignancy not typically found in economics literature (Iain Morris Observer)

Economist David Stuckler and epidemiologist Sanjay Basu have spent years correlating government policy and health statistics ... the data is as convincing as the stories are harrowing ... every country that has followed an economic crash with austerity has had a public health catastrophe (Richard Godwin Evening Standard)

Far too many books are described as seminal, but The Body Economic really could be ... Stuckler and Basu are in the vanguard of a movement to recast economics as a matter of life and death ... We should organise a massive love-bombing of Treasury and IMF officials with copies of The Body Economic (Amol Rajan Evening Standard)

The Body Economic is a bold synthesis of quantitative data, historical cases, personal narratives, and sociological and clinically informed analyses about the effects of investing, or failing to invest, in public health safety nets. In investigating the causes of adverse health outcomes in populations from the United States to the Soviet Union to Greece, Iceland, and the UK, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu expose many of the myths and mystifications that prop up the regnant ideologies of fiscal austerity. Stuckler and Basu revive the great, progressive tradition of social medicine. Their work is important not just for all those who deliver health care services, but also for anyone who might, just might, one day be a patient (Paul Farmer, M.D., Kolokotrones University Professor, Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director, Partners in Health)

Présentation de l'éditeur :

An agenda-shaping look at the human costs of financial crisis—the culmination of ten years’ work by two pioneering researchers

Politicians have talked endlessly about the seismic economic and social impact of the Great Recession, but many continue to ignore its disastrous effects on human health and have even exacerbated them by adopting harsh austerity measures and cutting key social programs at a time when citizens need them most. The result, as pioneering public health experts David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu reveal in this provocative book, is that many countries have turned their recessions into veritable epidemics, ruining or extinguishing thousands of lives in a misguided attempt to balance budgets and shore up financial markets. Yet sound alternative policies could help improve economies and protect public health at the same time.

In The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu mine data from around the globe and across history to show how government policy becomes a matter of life and death during financial crises. Through a series of case studies stretching from the United States in the 1930s to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s and present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, Canada and America, Stuckler and Basu reveal that political mismanagement of financial crises has resulted in a grim array of human tragedies, including suicides, HIV infections, West Nile Virus and tuberculosis epidemics. Yet people can and do stay healthy, and even get healthier, during downturns. During the Great Depression, U.S. death rates actually plummeted, and today, people in Iceland, Norway and Japan are happier and healthier than ever.

Full of shocking and counterintuitive revelations and bold policy recommendations, The Body Economic offers an alternative to austerity—one that will prevent widespread suffering, both now and in the future.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: HarperCollins Publishers
• Date d'édition: 2014
• ISBN 10: 144342045X
• ISBN 13: 9781443420457
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 240