The Financial and Economic Crises and Their Impact on Health and Social Well-Being

Vicente Navarro, Carles Muntaner

Introduction
Vicente Navarro and Carles Muntaner

PART I The Causes of the Crisis

1. Neoliberalism as a Class Ideology; Or, The Political Causes of the Growth of Inequalities
Vicente Navarro

2. The Crisis and Fiscal Policies in the Peripheral Countries of the Eurozone
Vicente Navarro

PART II The Crisis and Its Consequences for Welfare Services and Transfers

3. The Effects of Health Care Reforms on Health Inequalities: A Review and Analysis of the European Evidence Base
Elena Gelormino, Clare Bambra, Teresa Spadea, Silvia Bellini, and Giuseppe Costa

4. Ditching the Single-Payer System in the National Health Service: How the English Department of Health is Learning the Wrong Lessons from the United States
Lucy Reynolds, Clare Gerada, and Martin McKee

5. Visits to Family Physicians or Specialists by Elderly Persons in Canada and the United States: An Exploratory Comparative Study
Mark S. Kaplan, Nathalie Huguet, David Feeny, Bentson H. McFarland, and Stacey S. Williams

6. Minimum Income Protection and European Integration: Trends and Levels of Minimum Benefits in Comparative Perspective, 1990–2005
Kenneth Nelson

PART III The Crisis and Changes in the Labor Market

7. Employment Relations and Global Health: A Typological Study of World Labor Markets
Haejoo Chung, Carles Muntaner, Joan Benach, and the EMCONET Network

8. The Impact of Public Employment on Health and Health Inequalities: Evidence from China
Wei Zhang

9. Ensuring a Healthy and Productive Workforce: Comparing the Generosity of Paid Sick Day and Sick Leave Policies in 22 Countries
Jody Heymann, Hye Jin Rho, John Schmitt, and Alison Earle

10. Overstretched and Unreciprocated Commitment: Reviewing Research on the Occupational Health and Safety Effects of Downsizing and Job Insecurity
Michael Quinlan and Philip Bohle

11. Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Erosion Accelerates in the Recession
Elise Gould

12. How Do Macro-Level Contexts and Policies Affect the Employment Chances of Chronically Ill and Disabled People? The Impact of Recession and Deindustrialization
Paula Holland, Bo Burström, Margaret Whitehead, Finn Diderichsen, Espen Dahl, Ben Barr, Lotta Nylén, Wen-Hao Chen, Karsten Thielen, Kjetil A. van der Wel, Stephen Clayton, and Sharanjit Uppal

PART IV Changes in the Welfare States

13. Different Welfare States—Different Policies? An Analysis of the Substance of National Health Promotion Policies in Three European Countries
Elisabeth Fosse

14. Social Inequalities in “Sickness”: Does Welfare State Regime Type Make a Difference? A Multilevel Analysis of Men and Women in 26 European Countries
Kjetil A. van der Wel, Espen Dahl, and Karsten Thielen

15. Welfare State Regime Life Courses: The Development of Western European Welfare State Regimes and Age-Related Patterns of Educational Inequalities in Self-Reported Health
Clare Bambra, Gopalakrishnan Netuveli, and Terje A. Eikemo

16. Variation of Socioeconomic Gradients in Children’s Developmental Health Across Advanced Capitalist Societies: Analysis of 22 OECD Nations
Arjumand Siddiqi, Ichiro Kawachi, Lisa Berkman, S. V. Subramanian, and Clyde Hertzman

17. Gender Policy Developments and Policy Regimes in 22 OECD Countries, 1979–2008
Mona C. Backhans, Bo Burström, and Staffan Marklund

18. Analyzing Differences in the Magnitude of Socioeconomic Inequalities in Self-Perceived Health by Countries of Different Political Tradition in Europe
Carme Borrell, Albert Espelt, Maica Rodriguez-Sanz, Bo Burström, Carles Muntaner, M. Isabel Pasarin, Joan Benach, Chiara Marinacci, Albert-Jan Roskam, Maartje Schaap, Enrique Regidor, Giuseppe Costa, Paula Santana, Patrick Deboosere, Anton Kunst, and Vicente Navarro

PART V Changes in Class Inequalities

19. Class Divisions and Health Chances in Brazil
José Alcides Figueiredo Santos

20. Wealth Inequality and Health: A Political Economy Perspective
Nadine R. Nowatzki

21. The Other Side of the Chinese Economic Miracle
Wei Zhang

PART VI Focus on Solutions

22. Social Class, Politics, and the Spirit Level: Why Income Inequality Remains Unexplained and Unsolved
Carles Muntaner, Nanky Rai, Edwin Ng, and Haejoo Chung

23. The Solution Space: Developing Research and Policy Agendas to Eliminate Employment-Related Health Inequalities
Carles Muntaner, Sanjeev Sridharan, Haejoo Chung, Orielle Solar, Michael Quinlan, Montserrat Vergara, Joan Benach, and the EMCONET Network

24. Why We Don’t Spend Enough on Public Health: An Alternative View
Vicente Navarro

About the Editors

About the Authors