In an article in yesterday's Irish Times, Vincent Browne states that more than 5,000 people die in Ireland every year because of inequality and deprivation.
This is "14 times the number of people killed on the roads, about 2,000 more per year than were killed in the entire 25 years of the conflict in Northern Ireland; nearly 75 times the number of murders".
The director of the Health Research Board, Ruth Barrington, has made the calculation that about 5,400-plus premature deaths occur every year.
6 comments:
Hang on , is it inequality or deprivation, they are entirely different? Browne is obsessive about inequality, amongst other things. Everyone knows theres a social gradient to health, education etc which is not to say that we understand the causes of it. Will cash transfers to the poor make them live longer? We really have no idea, I suspect. This is not to say that one shouldn't do something but knee-jerk reactions don't help either.
Browne cites both (inequality and deprivation), almost inferring they go hand in hand. Of course, deprivation doesn't always have to accompamy inequality.
I would still be a victim of inequality even if my salary trebled tomorrow morning! But as things currently stand, I'm far from deprivation (except the odd bout of shortfall in sleep).
The distinction between absolute & relative inequality is a wee bit too subtle for some people alas. Although it is possible that it is relative deprivation that sends us to an early grave: all those bastards driving BMW's really makes my blood boil.
Just kidding.
Sleep poverty? Hmm theres an idea.
You've no doubt seen Hamermesh's:
"Sleep and the Allocation of Time," Journal of Political Economy, October 1990 (with J. Biddle)
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/JPE90.pdf
pdf after JPE90(dot)
to make the link work in an address bar
I was at a talk Hamermesh gave on time use in Bonn (the talk not the time use) about 10 years ago. He looked at the effect of daylight savings (spring forward, fall back etc) as a natural experiment. Good fun but I'm not sure its of much scientific interest.
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