The Great Escape Analysis

Gary Becker’s and Kevin Murphy’s “The Upside of Income Inequality” analyzes the correlation between overall economic development, the importance of education and the effects it has on increasing income inequality. Becker’s and Murphy’s article presents a study taken in China that shows the increase in income inequality raising at similar rates as economic growth. This ultimately leads to a decrease in the amount of people facing poverty and better living conditions for the poor. During China’s rapid rate of economic development “inequality rose, [but] the number of Chinese who live in poverty fell from 260 million in 1978 to 42 million in 1998. Despite the widening gap in incomes, rapid economic development dramatically improved the lives of China’s poor” (Becker and Murphy 581). The authors also state that income inequality is in fact a natural result of economic development because it “raised the standard of living for both the rich and the poor” (Becker and Murphy 582). Education also effects the average earnings of Americans. The importance of receiving an education has

This book was about men, women and children trying to escape the harsh treatment in concentration camp of Stalag Luft III. This camp was located in German in the town of Sagan. Today this area is occupied by the country of Poland. The time period was during World War II in 1944. It was chosen to be here due to they thought it would be very hard to escape this camp due to tunneling. This camp was mainly for prisoners of war. It was ran by the Luftwaffe and captured air service men. The main character of this book is a Royal Air force leader by the name of Roger Bushell. Although the author of this book Paul Brickhill plays an important and major role of planning and making sure the master plan goes as scheduled. Paul Brickhill had claustrophobia so therefore he could not actually take part in the escape. I still view him as a hero due to he helped save many lives which is a total act of heroism. My thesis is that when you are determined to accomplish something you will go to all means to do so and to make sure it gets done. These men and women digging these tunnels to escape risked a lot to

Inequality stands out as an extremely broad and influential determinant of health. The known and uncontrollable inequality of the world around us, almost chooses for us individually, the access we will have to health care based on the social-structural hierarchy. In other words, individually, you can be born into a country with a degree of inequality that affects your outcomes

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social wellbeing, and not just the absence of disease” (WHO, 1974). Health inequalities are the differences in health or healthcare opportunities in different societies this may be due to income,

Good health for all people has turned out to be an acknowledged global objective and the records reveal that there have been extensive achievements in life expectancy over the past century. However, there has been persistence in health disproportions between affluent and deprived despite the fact that the prospects for upcoming health trends depend more and more on the latest processes of globalization. In the previous times, globalization has frequently been observed as an economic process comparatively. At the present times, however, it is progressively perceived as a wide-ranging trend fashioned by a multitude of aspects and incidents that are restructuring and changing the format of our society swiftly (Huynen, Martens & Hilderink, 2005).

Health, illness and death are not randomly distributed across societies but rather determined based on ones class and socioeconomic status, their education and literacy, employment/working conditions, social and physical environments, food insecurity, social support networks, housing, poverty and inequality. These determinants have clear affects on the inequality of health and how it is

Social influences and class structure affect people’s health. People who live in poverty and are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder have worse health than those who have more money. In essence, inequality in society is making people sick. For example, the United States is a country that has very wealthy people along with a staggering amount of poor individuals, yet it is one of the richest countries in the world. It is clear that there is a widening gap of inequality in America, and according to the film Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (2008), the United States spends $2 trillion per year on medical care, but American citizens live shorter, sicker lives than most industrialized countries. But how is this possible?

The ninth President of the United States, William Henry Harrison once said, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” President Harrison addressed this quote in a speech in 1840, nearly two hundred years later nothing has seemed to change since than. In fact the gap between the rich and the poor only seems to have increased since than. The richest 10% of the people in the world currently make up for 85% of the global wealth. One of the biggest problems with poverty is the affect it has on a child’s development and educational outcomes. Economically speaking poverty is based on a person’s annual income. For a family of four if you make anything less than $24,000 collectively in a year than you are considered to be poor. A person who receives

Across the United States and in any other countries, there is a social injustice that is often overlooked, and that it income inequality. Taking a closer look into the topic, we can see how it affects the environment around us, but for this study, we will be looking specifically at the overall health of the United States. To do this, we will be looking at a variety of categories that will help showcase the health of America from the effects of income inequality. The three categories that will be that base criteria for our judgement on the health of the United States are crime, education, and economic growth.

Within several of these countries, the levels of income and wealth inequality have not been experienced since prior to the first world war (Piketty, 2014). Awareness of widening income and wealth inequality has been increasing and has been considered to be a major problem by some – as evident by the 2016 presidential primary election and caucuses and also increasing academic work on the topic. Naturally, this increasing inequality allows a fairly small population to accumulate more economic capital, leaving less for the rest of the population. The rate of income and wealth inequality has not shown any signs of reversing or even leveling off (Piketty, 2014; Skopek, Buchholz, & Blossfeld, 2014). Acknowledging both disparities in health by SES and growing economic inequality in developed countries begs the question – does growing income and wealth inequality mean growing health inequality too? This essay seeks to answer this question on the assumption that the US would reveal greater levels of health disparities compared to other developed countries, which would be reflective of the greater levels of income and wealth inequality. Finding a close association between economic inequality and health disparities may unfold an initial approach to improve national

The research surrounding social determinants of health has contributed to identifying the causes of disease, access to health care services, and several other predictors in the pre-cautionary risks surrounding the health care industry and the systemic problems created by exclusion. John W. Frank and J. Fraser Mustard (1994) authors of the article “The Determinants of Health from a Historical Perspective” argue that these issues have always been present in history. They suggest that since the introduction of the National Health Services to the United Kingdom in 1948 , the belief was that “the gradient in health across the social classes (the highest social class had the lowest mortality rates, and the lowest social classed had the highest mortality

Health consequences are the result of accumulation of inequalities over the life course (Hofrichter, 2003). It has been argued, the more egalitarian a country is, the healthier the population, and key to a healthy population is the organization of material conditions in everyday life. These conditions are referred to as the social determinants of health, and include such things as levels of employment, standard of living, education, economic development, racism and workplace conditions to name a few (Hofrichter, 2003). It is these social determinants of health which in turn perpetuate health inequalities. Yet there are social gradients in health as who gets these resources is socially determined (Marmot, 2005), and problems of the social gradient are more prevalent in unequal countries as health tends to improve the higher the socio-economic status and those who are less well-off and socially excluded find their health status deteriorating as they fair badly in relation to social determinants (Farrell et al., 2008). These health inequalities are systematic and therefore, are not randomly distributed, they are socially produced, and they are not a product of biological processes (Farrell et al., 2008). Thus, the average wellbeing is not dependent on national income and economic growth, but yet “differences between – and within –

Education comes with social benefits as well which can improve the situation of the poor, such as lower fertility and improved health care of children ("Poverty and Education"). "Poor people are often unable to obtain access to an adequate education, and without an adequate education people are often constrained to a life of poverty." - Servaas Van Der Berg. The absolutely poor in developing countries have low education levels. Some may not even have access to primary education or may not have completed their primary education, not realizing that it is important to reduce poverty. Education is often poorly measured, and the impacts do not always show up as statistically significant in cross- country growth regressions (Levine & Renelt, 1992). Africa’s education crisis makes media headlines and analysis by the Brookings Center for Universal Education (CUE) explains why this needs to change. Progress towards universal primary education has come to a halt and learning levels of children who are in school are poor as well. Using a Learning Barometer, CUE estimates that 61 million African children will reach adolescence lacking even the most basic literacy and numeracy skills, this will deprive a whole generation of opportunities to develop and escape poverty ("Poverty, Education, & Opportunity").

Rowlingson (2011) agrees with Wilkinson and Pickett that there is indeed a strong correlation between income and health and social problems. In her report she includes the ‘Marmot Review’ (Marmot, 2010) which shows evidence that people living in England in the poorest areas compared to those living in the richest will, on average, die 7 years earlier. This suggests a clear link between class and health. The report further notes other additional factors, such as infant mortality, and mental and physical well being go hand in hand with inequality.

Evidence has persisted through the last century that people struggling under the pressures of poverty often experience inferior lifestyles compared to those with higher incomes, however it is less apparent to what degree income can truly affect the overall health and well-being of different social classes. People with higher income typically have better access to healthcare, education, freedom and equality and in turn will on average have greater overall health, better occupations amongst many other benefits but it is difficult to accurately establish to what extent these additional endowments actually contribute to the well-being and early health of their infants. And if there is indeed a connection between income and infant mortality or birth weight, what other conditions must be held constant or controlled in order for these connections to be statistically significant?