Equity Must Accompany Economic Growth for Good Health 英文参考文献.docVIP

Perspective EquityMustAccompanyEconomicGrowthforGood Health K.SrinathReddy* PublicHealthFoundationofIndia,VasantKunj,NewDelhi,India India’srapideconomicgrowth,afterthe initiation of market-oriented reforms two decades ago, has been the subject of considerableinternationalattention.How- ever,thisacceleratedeconomicgrowthhas not been matched by marked improve- ments in many of the key indicators of health.Notonlyaretheratesofinfantand maternal mortality lagging behind the Millennium Development Goals, but the level of undernutrition among children is appallinglyhigh.Evenifthereisalagtime for improvements in the economic status ofcountriestobereflectedinbetterhealth indicators at the population level, child nutritionshouldbeoneoftheearliestand highly sensitive indicators of economic growth favourably impacting health. Yet, this has not happened in India, where average calorie intake has declined over thelast25years[1]. well than their social class peers in more equalsocieties. LinkedResearchArticle ThepatternofIndia’seconomicgrowth overthelasttwodecadeshasaccentuated incomeinequality,withalargesegmentof the society not benefiting from it. The recentmeasureofpersonslivingbelowthe povertylevel,evenbyofficialestimates,is 37.2%ofthepopulation.Thosejustabove that level and even the middle class are This Perspective discusses the fol- lowingnewstudypublishedinPLoS Medicine: SubramanyamMA,KawachiI,Berk- man LF, Subramanian SV (2011) Is Economic Growth Associated with Reduction in Child Undernutrition in India? PLoS Med 8(3): e1000424. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000424 also highly vulnerable to food price inflation. As such, aggregate national or stateindicatorsofeconomicgrowthdonot reflecttherealpurchasingpowerofmany at the bottom and middle of the popula- tionpyramid. An analysis of cross-sectional data fromrepeatedhouseholdsurveysin India, combined with data on eco- nomic growth, fails to find strong There is also a poverty of opportuni- ties—for education, employment