Income Equality and Population Health: An Update
Ichiro Kawachi, professor of epidemiology, Harvard University

Income inequality has grown steadily in America for the past 40 years. Dr. Ichiro Kawachi will summarize the contested evidence linking income inequality to worse population health. He will argue that income inequality is detrimental to public health on three grounds: (a) because high levels of inequality imply that people in the lower parts of the income distribution are poorer than they otherwise would be (the concavity effect); (b) because inequality produces a variety of negative spillover effects on society, including the erosion of social cohesion (a pollution effect); and (c) because inequality creates frustration and stress for those who are left behind, while the well-off gradually accept these disparities as a normal state of affairs.

Admission: FREE (advance registration required)