Synopses & Reviews
The economic and social devastation wrought by the recent financial crisis have been well documented, but what about the deeper damage the Great Recession has inflictednot just on the market and our wallets, but on our bodies and minds? In
The Body Economic, pioneering public health experts David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu reveal this hidden dimension of economic turmoil, drawing on their groundbreaking research into medicine, economics, and austerity politics to explore the human cost of downturns, and to show how theyand governments responses to themaffect public health around the world.
As Stuckler and Basu show, the wrong responses to economic downturns can be lethaland not always in the ways one might expect. To be sure, increases in lay-offs, debt, and poverty can have predictable effects on peoples wellbeing; in Greece, for example, the suicide rate rose by 40% in a three-year period following the onset of the recent economic crisis, while in London, heart attacks rose by 2,000 during the market turmoil. But other, more surprising health problems have also spiked. Tuberculosis infections in Greece have recently skyrocketed; austerity measures have led to deep cuts to Greeces housing budget, leaving large swaths of the Greek population homeless and creating the conditions necessary for a tuberculosis epidemic. And in California during the early stages of the foreclosure crisis, the state found itself contending with a major outbreak of the West Nile virus. The neglected pools in the backyards of many repossessed homes had been taken over by algae, making them the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes carrying the disease.
Trends such as these speak to the diverse negative effects that economic decline can have on public health. But equally remarkable are the examples of countries that have stayed healthy, and even gotten healthier, during times of crisis. Iceland, for instance, experienced the 11th worst recession of all time during the recent economic downturn, but emerged happier and healthier than ever thanks to a combination of factors, among them tight regulations on alcohol and a sense of national camaraderie (reinforced, it seems, by longstanding community-building traditions like steam-bathing). Similarly, Japan and Norway reached their highest life expectancy to date in the wake of the financial crisis.
Considering case after case of the profound and often unforeseen health effects of economic crises and policymakers responses, Stuckler and Basu identify patterns that, when taken together, should help leaders more effectively and conscientiously shepherd their societies through such emergencies. Austerity measures, which many governments have adopted in response to the recent financial downturn, are particularly disastrous for public health. Even in the midst of a crisis, the authors argue, politicians need to resist the urge to demolish social spending, and should make decisions based on their likely effects on peoples health, not just the drive to drive to improve financial growth.
Offering shocking and often counterintuitive revelations about the connections between economics and public health, The Body Economic draws on an enormous body of cutting-edge research to present a fresh perspective on the most crucial yet neglected aspect of the current financial crisisand to put forth bold recommendations for preventing widespread suffering now and in the future.
Review
Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development, University of Cambridge, and author of 23 Things They Dont Tell You About CapitalismA powerful and important contribution to our future. Stuckler and Basu use statistics not to dehumanize people, but to bring them to life.”
Review
Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Kolokotrones University Professor, Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director, Partners in HealthThe Body Economic is a bold synthesis of quantitative data, historical cases, personal narratives, and sociological and clinically informed analyses about the effects of investing, or failing to invest, in public health safety nets. In investigating the causes of adverse health outcomes in populations from the United States to the Soviet Union to Greece, Iceland, and the UK, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu expose many of the myths and mystifications that prop up the regnant ideologies of fiscal austerity. Stuckler and Basu revive the great, progressive tradition of social medicine. Their work is important not just for all those who deliver health care services, but also for anyone who might, just might, one day be a patient.”
Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development, University of Cambridge, and author of 23 Things They Dont Tell You About Capitalism
A powerful and important contribution to our future. Stuckler and Basu use statistics not to dehumanize people, but to bring them to life.”
Review
Boston GlobeMeticulously researched and richly annotated, The Body Economic is nonetheless a very accessible and engaging book. The authors succeed admirably in making the case that downsizing (or dismantling) the social safety nets that exist to protect those in need directly leads to increased sickness and death within the general population.... The lessons contained within The Body Economic should be carefully considered by both policy makers and constituents.”
Financial Times
Austerity kills and on a grand scale. So argue David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu in The Body Economic, a powerful attack on efforts to curb public spending since the financial crisis, which holds belt-tightening politicians responsible for a health catastrophe.... By telling the stories of individual victims of austerity as well as analyzing its impact at the population level, Stuckler and Basu provide a wealth of evidence that it is bad for our health. That is a valuable contribution to the current debate.”
Choice
This book is timely, very readable, well written, and informative, and should be read by those interested in the health of the economy and citizens. Highly recommended.”
Financial Times
[Stuckler and Basu] gathered and analyzed huge sets of data on the effects that economic stringency has had on public health in recent history. They published their findings in their 2013 book The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills. If you think the books title is a tad dramatic, think again. Looking at cases such as European Union-backed budget cuts in Greece and the Great Recession in the United States, Basu and Stuckler conclude, as they wrote in a New York Times op-ed, that austerity severe, immediate, indiscriminate cuts to social and health spending is not only self-defeating, but fatal.”
The New Republic
Stuckler and Basu provide a capable summary of the basic problems with austerity economics as economics, but their signal contribution in this book is to focus on the health effects of austerity.... They find that, the more austerity was practiced in a state or country, the more people got sick and the more people died. In short, Austerity Kills is more than just a slogan. Austerity doesnt work as economics, and it kills people in the bargain.”
Foreign Affairs
Stuckler and Basu approach austerity policies from a medical perspective, producing an extensive array of evidence to show that austerity especially cuts to spending on public health increases illness and death. Most compelling is their finding that countries that have suffered through recessions have avoided deterioration in their citizens well-being by maintaining government spending on public health.”
Bookforum
[Stuckler and Basu] wear their expertise and statistical knowledge lightly, opting to deliver their research findings in a jazzy, casual tone.... The real power of the book lies in the epidemiological insight that its possible to think about medicine not in the exclusive terms of the individual patients life, but by tracking the conditions that affect health throughout society.”
The Guardian
[This] message...is explosive, backed by a decade of research, and based on reams of publicly available data.... In a powerful new book, The Body Economic, Stuckler and his colleague Sanjay Basu...show that austerity is now having a devastating effect on public health in Europe and North America.”
Times Higher Education
This book deserves to be widely read and widely influential. It brings crucial arguments, set out and tested in academic papers, to a larger audience. It lays bare the madness of the conventional wisdom that the answer to the current crisis is to cut public spending, and it explains clearly why the social policy response to economic events matters. It reminds us that politicians have a devastating tendency to listen to ideology rather than history and that the cost of this approach can be counted not just in lost economic output but in human lives.”
Shelf Awareness for Readers
Throughout the book, Stuckler and Basu rely on economic studies, most of them subjected to peer review, to underline a critical point: public health is economic health. Far from being the luxury the IMF categorizes it as, public health spending is in fact necessary to the economic recovery of a country in recession. The Body Economic makes the point in stark and accessible terms..... [A] thoroughly researched look into the effects of austerity policies on public health.”
Nature
What price a healthy stock market? In this stringent economic analysis, sociologist David Stuckler and epidemiologist Sanjay Basu argue that during a recession, austerity-based cuts to social spending erode public health.... A sobering call for democratic, informed choices in response to recession.”
Salon
Todays politicians know very well that some of their policies kill people. But they go ahead and carry out those policies anyway. How they have done it recently is brilliantly documented in this book.... The authors make a powerful case that the austerity measures adopted in some countries and imposed on some others had a direct and fatal impact on those countries public health. ”
The Progressive
"An admirable work, eminently readable and yet without skimping on rigorous analysis.”
In These Times
Stuckler and Basu show distressingly consistent increases in such key public-health indicators as suicides, heart disease, alcoholism and HIV infection in societies embarking on steep reductions in social spending. Correspondingly, societies (such as Iceland, Sweden and Finland) that have refused to pare back their welfare states in hard times exhibit steady and, in some cases, increasing signs of public health.”
The Observer, UK
Global austerity has a rarely discussed death toll, and David Stuckler and Sanjay Basus The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills breaks the silence.”
Publishers Weekly
Oxford Senior Research leader Stuckler and Stanford epidemiologist Basu offer insight into the economic crisis including the Great Recession and its effect on public health, arguing that countries attempt to fix recessions by balancing budgets, but have failed to protect public well-being.”
Kirkus Reviews
A dramatic study emphasizing some of the combined consequences of ideological obsessions and bureaucratic thoughtlessness.”
Booklist
This informative book will add important perspective to the ongoing debate on the consequences of economic policies.”
Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Kolokotrones University Professor, Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director, Partners in Health
The Body Economic is a bold synthesis of quantitative data, historical cases, personal narratives, and sociological and clinically informed analyses about the effects of investing, or failing to invest, in public health safety nets. In investigating the causes of adverse health outcomes in populations from the United States to the Soviet Union to Greece, Iceland, and the UK, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu expose many of the myths and mystifications that prop up the regnant ideologies of fiscal austerity. Stuckler and Basu revive the great, progressive tradition of social medicine. Their work is important not just for all those who deliver health care services, but also for anyone who might, just might, one day be a patient.”
Ha-Joon Chang, PhD, Faculty of Economics, Cambridge University, and author of 23 Things They Dont Tell You About Capitalism
A powerful and important contribution to our future. Stuckler and Basu use statistics not to dehumanize people, but to bring them to life.”
Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow, Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School, and author of John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics
The Great Recessions visible costs bankruptcies, foreclosures, unemployment, government deficits and their still-lingering effects are chillingly well-known. Less understood are the health consequences the suicides, epidemics, and soaring mortality rates that represent the most intimate human effects not just of our global financial collapse but also of the mistaken austerity programs that have followed. The Body Economic is required reading for anyone who wants to see how bad politics and worse policies have worsened suffering around the world when, by any democratic measure, our common obligation is to end suffering.”
Darrell J. Bricker, CEO, Ipsos Public Affairs, and author of The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future
The Body Economic is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the real life consequences of governments making the wrong policy decisions in response to the worst economic disruption since the Great Depression. In a debate too often dominated by ideology, Stuckler and Basu bring a refreshing, evidence-based perspective to the table. And, they present their casethat an obsession with austerity hurts both economies and peoplein an accessible, personal way. This isnt a story about spreadsheets and algorithmsits about the ordinary people who pay the ultimate price for their governments cavalier ideological obsessions.”
Review
"The sense of desperation is palpable, as is the helplessness of job centre advisers under pressure to increase sanctions, and the anger and despair of community and public-sector workers. Both the immediate injustice and the waste of human potential leap from the pages of this book."
Review
“The subject matter of OHaras first book is not merely bleeding-heart-liberal-soapbox stuff; she is the embodiment of how a welfare system in the UK can lift people out of poverty. She comes from a proud working-class family in Belfast, Northern Ireland, earning a scholarship to Cambridge, and, later, a Fulbright scholarship. Political moods and wonk-ish social policy are her lifeblood. This is her beat, and she owns it with facts and figures, not blustering talk. Austerity Bites, not surprisingly then, is a work of scholarship and extensive reporting. OHara conveys the lives of everyday people throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—through their own words—who have been adversely affected by the tough austerity measures. She spent years on the ground in various parts of the UK talking to working people, taking their temperature on the recent cuts to social and welfare programs . . . and championing their everyday lives (and opinions) over the din of politicians and pundit-class puffery.”
Review
“Austerity Bites is a book brimming with anger at the multiple injustices in the United Kingdom and how the current austerity programme is underpinning and exacerbating these inequalities.”
Review
“Best book of 2014 . . . . In a determined effort to win public acquiescence, if not active support, for austerity, both the government and its media apologists have tried to hide the human impact of slash-and-burn economics. Mary O’Hara’s superb Austerity Bites strips bare the reality of what Osbornomics means for human beings and, crucially, she gives a platform to voices that are otherwise unheard and deliberately ignored.”
Review
“OHaras book strips away the rhetoric to reveal the truth. The United Kingdom is not the land of fairness; its a fearful place, where the heaviest burdens fall on the weakest.”
Review
“OHara has written a powerful and vivid account of the regressive and harmful impact of public spending cuts, which gives voice to those who are suffering. Read it and be angry. Pass it on. Send a copy to your MP. To echo one of her interviewees: those in power need to listen.”
Review
“Traveling around the country interviewing people allowed OHara to harness firsthand accounts of the fallout of cuts in the United Kingdom. Austerity Bites brings together many poignant stories of people affected by the first impact of the coalition governments choice to impose social austerity on Britain.”
Review
“OHaras mission is to give voice to those experiencing hardship or injustice who are rarely heard. She travelled the United Kingdom for a year to bear witness to the effects of Austerity Britain, and we should all pay attention to the result.”
Review
“An uncomfortable but necessary read.”
Review
“This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the great human cost of austerity. Read it, get angry, and get active.”
Review
“A thoroughly authentic, fair but passionate account of a Britain that we at Community Links know only too well. It’s a powerful story, too little heard and understood, but brilliantly told. I hope you will send a copy to the Prime Minister.”
Synopsis
Politicians have talked endlessly about the economic devastation wrought by the recent financial crisis, but what about the damage its done to our bodies and minds? In
The Body Economic, pioneering public health researchers David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu mine data from around the globe and throughout history to demonstrate that bad fiscal policyparticularly cuts to social service spendingcan have disastrous consequences for human health. While some nations have seen suicide rates, HIV transmissions, alcoholism, and heart disease spike during the Great Recession, not everyone has sufferedor needs to, so long as governments make health and well-being a priority.
Brimming with counterintuitive findings and bold policy recommendations, The Body Economic makes the urgent case that while recessions hurt, austerity measures can kill.
Synopsis
Politicians have talked endlessly about the seismic economic and social impacts of the recent financial crisis, but many continue to ignore its disastrous effects on human healthand have even exacerbated them, by adopting harsh austerity measures and cutting key social programs at a time when constituents need them most. The result, as pioneering public health experts David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu reveal in this provocative book, is that many countries have turned their recessions into veritable epidemics, ruining or extinguishing thousands of lives in a misguided attempt to balance budgets and shore up financial markets. Yet sound alternative policies could instead help improve economies and protect public health at the same time.
In The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu mine data from around the globe and throughout history to show how government policy becomes a matter of life and death during financial crises. In a series of historical case studies stretching from 1930s America, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., Stuckler and Basu reveal that governmental mismanagement of financial strife has resulted in a grim array of human tragedies, from suicides to HIV infections. Yet people can and do stay healthy, and even get healthier, during downturns. During the Great Depression, U.S. deaths actually plummeted, and today Iceland, Norway, and Japan are happier and healthier than ever, proof that public wellbeing need not be sacrificed for fiscal health.
Full of shocking and counterintuitive revelations and bold policy recommendations, The Body Economic offers an alternative to austerityone that will prevent widespread suffering, both now and in the future.
Synopsis
Since taking power in 2010, the Coalition Government in the United Kingdom has pushed through a drastic program of cuts to public spending, all in the name of austerity. The effects on large segments of the population, dependent on programs whose funding was slashed, have been devastating and will continue to be felt for generations.
This timely book by journalist Mary O’Hara chronicles the real-world effects of austerity, removing it from the bland, technocratic language of politics and showing just what austerity means to ordinary lives. Drawing on hundreds of hours of first-person interviews with a wide range of people and, in the paperback edition, featuring an updated afterword by the author, the book explores the grim reality of living amid the biggest reduction of the welfare state in the postwar era and offers a compelling corrective to narratives of shared sacrifice.
About the Author
Dr. David Stuckler is a University Lecturer in Sociology at Cambridge University, Associate Faculty at Johns Hopkins Department of Health Policy and Management, a fellow of Magdalene College, and a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Chatham House, and Public Health Foundation of India. Stuckler holds a Masters in Public Health from Yale University and a PhD from Cambridge University, and has written over 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the economics of global health. He has won millions of dollars in research grants from the World Health Organization, European Commission, and European Centers for Disease Control, and his work has been featured in
The New York Times, The Economist, and
Scientific American, and on BBC World Service, NPR, and CNN.
Dr. Sanjay Basu is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and an epidemiologist at the Prevention Research Center of Stanford University, and has taught courses at MIT, Yale and the University of California on global health, politics and economics. Basu holds an MD and PhD from Yale, prior to which he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University; he completed his residency at the University of California in San Francisco and the San Francisco General Hospital. He has written over 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject of global health in journals including Nature, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine. He receives funding for his research on health policy from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. Basu has been elected to the New York Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Truman and Goldwater Awards for his work, which has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post, and on MSNBC, Fox News, and BBC News.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Mark Thomas
Foreword by Mark Blyth
Preface to the paperback edition
Introduction
Moneys too tight to mention
The big squeeze
Welcome to ‘Wongaland
Work maketh the person
All work and no pay
Bearing the brunt
A life lived in fear is a life half lived
Conclusion
Afterword to the paperback edition