Improving health is a key concern of all societies, a crucial aspect for individuals but at the same time, it can contribute to higher economic growth and welfare. Thus health care has always been a complicated policy issue and cannot be separated from other issues that impinge on health such as growth, inequality, poverty etc. With a special reference to the Republic of Armenia, this book discusses the problem of achieving and sustaining redistributive health care in the context of inequality and low incomes and presents the pro-poor aspects of health policies in most important aspects.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.

Accessible and edited by authors based at a top institution, this book provides readers with an excellent summary in an easy-to-read style of this burgeoning field of research. In this volume Bennett, Gilson and Mills have gathered together essays written by academics and experts in the fields of health policy and economic development, each underscoring the need for political commitment to meet the needs of the poor and the development of strategies to build this commitment, covering: evidence regarding the links between health, economic development and household poverty evidence on the extent to which health care systems address the needs of the poor and the near poor innovative measures to make health care interventions widely available to the poor. Current and topical, this book is of great relevance to policy makers and practitioners in the field of international health and development and researchers engaged with global health and poverty as well as being ideal reading for students of international health and development.

Economic growth is the most important determinant of poverty reduction. But countries with similar rates of growth can experience different poverty reduction rates.

The relationship between growth, inequality, and poverty lies at the heart of development economics. This volume draws together many of the most important recent contributions to the controversies surrounding this topic. Some of the chapters help explain why there is profound disagreement on crucial issues of growth, poverty and inequality within academic circles, and among organizations and various groups active in the development field. Another central theme is the cross-country evidence on the relationship between growth and poverty, and the extent to which it is valid to draw policy conclusions from this empirical evidence. The volume also shows how new microeconomic techniques such as poverty maps and microsimulation models can be used to improve poverty analysis and the design of pro-poor policies. The overall conclusion points to the need for diverse strategies towards growth and poverty, rather than simple blanket policy rules. Initial conditions, specific country structures, and time horizons all play a significant role. Initial conditions affect the speed with which growth reduces poverty and can also determine whether policies such as trade liberalization have a pro-poor or an anti-poor outcome. Improved education is valuable in itself, and also contributes to poverty reduction; but its effect on inequality depends on supply and demand factors, which differ significantly across countries. Likewise, the quantitative impact on poverty of redistribution from the rich to the poor vis-a-vis an increase in total national income can vary greatly across countries. Hence the need for creative approaches to poverty which take full account of the specific circumstances of individual nations and which assign a central role to inequality analysis in the discussion of poverty-alleviation policies.

In the last two decades of the 20th century, we witnessed a dramatic growth in social inequalities within and among countries. This has had a most negative impact on the health and quality of life of large sectors of the populations in the developed and underdeveloped world. This volume analyzes the reasons for this increase in inequalities and its consequences for the well-being of populations. Scholars from a variety of disciplines and countries analyze the different dimensions of this topic.