A01=Werner Troesken
amendment
america
american
Author_Werner Troesken
Category=MBX
Category=MJCJ
clause
commerce
constitution
constitutional
contract
developed world
diet
disease
economics
economy
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
exercise
federalism
fever
finance
financial
freedom
healthcare
healthy
inequality
infection
legal
liberty
life expectancy
lifestyle
medical
medicine
policies
policy
political
public health
smallpox
social studies
society
typhoid
unhealthy
united states
usa
wealth
wellness
yellow
Product details
- ISBN 9780226922171
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 29 Jun 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world. But that wealth hasn't translated to a higher life expectancy, an area where the United States still ranks thirty-eighth-behind Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, and Greece, among many others. Some fault the absence of universal health care or the persistence of social inequalities. Others blame unhealthy lifestyles. But these emphases on present-day behaviors and policies miss a much more fundamental determinant of societal health: the state. Werner Troesken looks at the history of the United States with a focus on three diseases - smallpox, typhoid fever, and yellow fever - to show how constitutional rules and provisions that promoted individual liberty and economic prosperity also influenced the country's ability to eradicate infectious disease. Ranging from federalism under the Commerce Clause to the Contract Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, Troesken argues persuasively that many institutions intended to promote desirable political or economic outcomes also hindered the provision of public health. We are unhealthy, in other words, at least in part because our political and legal institutions function well.
The compelling new perspective of The Pox of Liberty challenges many traditional claims that infectious diseases are inexorable forces in human history, revealing them instead to be the result of public and private choices.
Werner Troesken is professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Water, Race, and Disease; Why Regulate Utilities?; and The Great Lead Water Pipe Disaster.
