1. Incomes, capabilities, and mortality decline; 2. Democracy, spending, services, and survival; 3. Costa Rica: a healthy democracy; 4. Chile: the pinochet paradox; 5. Argentina: big welfare state, slow infant mortality decline; 6. Brazil: from laggard to leader in basic health service provision; 7. Taiwan: from poor but healthy to wealthy and healthy; 8. South Korea: small welfare state, fast infant mortality decline; 9. Thailand: democratization speeds infant mortality decline; 10. Indonesia: authoritarianism slows infant mortality decline; 11. Wealth, health, democracy, and mortality.
1. Incomes, capabilities, and mortality decline; 2. Democracy, spending, services, and survival; 3. Costa Rica: a healthy democracy; 4. Chile: the pinochet paradox; 5. Argentina: big welfare state, slow infant mortality decline; 6. Brazil: from laggard to leader in basic health service provision; 7. Taiwan: from poor but healthy to wealthy and healthy; 8. South Korea: small welfare state, fast infant mortality decline; 9. Thailand: democratization speeds infant mortality decline; 10. Indonesia: authoritarianism slows infant mortality decline; 11. Wealth, health, democracy, and mortality.
James W. McGuire explores why some East Asian and Latin American societies have done better than others at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality.
James W. McGuire is a professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. He specializes in comparative politics with a regional focus on Latin America and East Asia and a topical focus on democracy and public health. He is the author of Peronism without Perón: Unions, Parties, and Democracy in Argentina and is a recipient of Wesleyan's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
“McGuire demonstrates that democracies are better at providing
‘good health at low cost’ than are less-free political systems. His
thorough work also puts the capstone on a large and consistent body
of research showing that a population need not be rich to be
healthy.”
– Health Affairs
“McGuire’s major contribution is the combination of quantitative
analysis with a detailed qualitative investigation of the
institutional framework of eight countries in Latin America and
East Asia. This enables him to explain anomalies, such as the
Chilean case, in which an authoritarian government during a period
of declining GDP presided over a dramatic drop in infant mortality
(1973-84)…Highly recommended.”
– J. Gerber, San Diego State University, Choice
“The main competing hypotheses are ‘wealthier is healthier,’ which
sees higher incomes as the main driving force, and the social
service provision alternative, which emphasizes the importance of
government delivery of basic services related to health, education,
family planning, safe water, and sanitation. Cross-national data
show reasonably strong correlation between GDP per capita and
infant mortality—supporting the first hypothesis—but only very weak
correlation between growth in GDP per capita and rate of decline in
mortality—which is consistent with the second hypothesis. This
volume brings a fresh perspective to the debate by combining and
integrating public health and political science perspectives.”
– John Bongaarts, Vice President and Distinguished Scholar,
Population Council, Population and Development Review
“Wealth, Health and Democracy is an excellent study of the
determinants of social policy and development outcomes in the
global south… The implications of Wealth, Health and Democracy are
powerful and provocative. The insights gained from this study are
plenty. By unpacking the monolithic idea of the welfare state,
McGuire teaches us that in fact the social policies that have the
most impact in the context of the global south feasible.”
– Joseph Wong, University of Toronto, Governance
“Methodologically, this book is a gem. In addition to providing
rich historical case studies, drawn from a plethora of sources
ranging from archival materials to in-depth interviews, McGuire
includes an impressive array of statistical data…McGuire does a
commendable job of carefully blending rigorous statistical analyses
with in-depth qualitative evidence. Given the dearth of studies
conducting this kind of methodological approach, this book is a
must-read for any political scientist working on comparative public
health policy.”
– Eduardo J. Gómez, Rutgers University, Journal of Health Politics,
Policy and Law
“Infant mortality tells us a tremendous amount about a society. To
what extent does the government care about the most vulnerable? No
one has plumbed the determinants of infant mortality across
countries better than James McGuire. In this compelling study,
McGuire scrupulously shows that economic growth is not enough to
reduce infant mortality; effective delivery of social services
matters. Moreover, he shows that democracy is important as well.
Sustained democratic rule creates a culture more conducive to the
expansion of human capabilities. A powerful piece of social
science.”
– Stephan Haggard, University of California San Diego
“This is an impressive book that drives home an extremely important
argument: Provision of comparatively low-cost public health
services is a more effective way of lowering premature mortality
than reliance on economic growth, and democracy over the long run
favors provision and utilization of these services. McGuire musters
massive amounts of evidence, which makes the book a goldmine for
scholars and students interested in development in general as well
as in country studies.”
– Evelyne Huber, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“James McGuire has produced an outstanding, and in many respects
pathbreaking, book. It is important not only because of its
theoretical and analytical contributions, which are considerable,
but also because it has major policy implications about an issue of
fundamental social importance: keeping infants alive. He argues
persuasively that countries do not need high growth or large
welfare states to lower mortality; relatively inexpensive and
non-controversial primary health programs can have a striking
impact. McGuire skillfully melds together an extensive literature
on public health policy with political science literature on regime
type, interest groups, and international influences. The book will
be of considerable interest both to the policy community and to
academic research audiences in political science, economics, and
sociology.”
– Robert Kaufman, Rutgers University
“Political science has focused too exclusively on the creation and
operation of institutions and has examined too little the policy
outputs and outcomes that they produce. In this unique and
impressive book, James McGuire helps to rectify this stark
imbalance by investigating the impact of democracy and of specific
policy programs on basic health issues. The broad, cross-regional
scope of the analysis and the depth of the research are
exceptional. I am highly impressed by the mastery of detail, the
comprehensiveness of the analysis, and McGuire’s capacity to put it
all together as a vast canvas. This book is certain to have an
important place in the scholarly literature.”
– Kurt Weyland, University of Texas, Austin
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