Your browser doesn't support javascript.
loading
Show: 20 | 50 | 100
Results 1 - 20 de 425
Filter
1.
Soc Hist Med ; 37(1): 1-26, 2024 Feb.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38947277

ABSTRACT

Using the journal of the Dutch Diabetics Association (Nederlandse Vereniging van Suikerzieken), the article provides insight into the role of an early patient organisation in conceptualising the chronic disease diabetes and its management in the Netherlands between 1945 and 1970. The dual aims of discipline (steered by health professionals) and independence (steered by diabetics) were reconciled through the concept of balance during the 1940s and 1950s. Organised diabetics played a particularly large role, and independence got particular emphasis as a consequence. This made it possible for organised patients to reconfigure their disease and identity in terms of social health in relation to labour, family and society in the post-war reconstruction period. In the late 1960s, this social concept transformed into a personal concept of health in which the concept of balance lost its prominence, despite a short intermezzo of medicalisation in the early 1960s.

2.
Article in German | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38906801

ABSTRACT

Having dealt with Martini's understanding of causality and his procedural elements of evidence in the third part, the concluding article once again takes a historical perspective. It (1) traces the positionings and contexts of Martini's methodology in a sort of historical longitudinal section and (2) discusses the reasons for the rather reluctant response to his research programme in German and international medicine. We then focus (3) on Martini's understanding and concept of clinical research, the specific challenges he faced in post-war German medicine - and what remains of it today. Finally, we summarise the key findings of our article series and reflect on Martini's work in terms of its special nature and significance for clinical medicine in the 20th century.

3.
J Hist Neurosci ; : 1-13, 2024 Apr 15.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38621223

ABSTRACT

This article examines disagreements among three giants of twentieth-century American neurology: Raymond Adams, Joseph Foley, and Abraham Baker. The disagreements Adams and Foley had with Baker concerned two issues: (1) the neurologic and neuropathological manifestations of liver failure with hepatic encephalopathy as expounded from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and (2) the founding of the American Academy of Neurology in 1948 as an inclusive medical society under the principal leadership of Baker. The conflicts are examined from transcribed meeting debates (1949-1963), salient original publications (1949-1963), public addresses of protagonists touching on these issues (1971, 1984), and oral histories and less formal interviews of the protagonists and their associates (1979-2014). Contributing to these conflicts were contrasting personalities and outlooks on American neurology in the mid-twentieth century. Adams and Foley prevailed with their characterization of the neurologic and neuropathologic features of liver failure, whereas Baker triumphed with the need for and importance of an inclusive neurological society that would develop continuing medical education for neurologists at a national level, garner federal financial support for neurology training programs, and facilitate the development of neurology as a strong, independent medical discipline in the United States.

4.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38646663

ABSTRACT

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's historic election victory in 2018 marked a sharp break from past decades of neoliberal socioeconomic policies. López Obrador campaigned on the promise of deep reform, with health care high on his agenda. The public health care sector had been decimated by decades of budget cuts, eroding workers' morale and patients' confidence, and crippling all aspects of the system. This article looks back to the creation of the nation's public health care system in the early twentieth century during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940). This "universal" system was designed to implement a central social justice goal of the Mexican Revolution of health care for all. The program rested on two pillars: providing care to the nation's vast, impoverished rural population and actively engaging communities in their own health care. Our objective is to critically assess the two presidents' health care initiatives within the distinct historical contexts of their administrations.


Subject(s)
Health Care Reform , Politics , Health Care Reform/history , Health Care Reform/organization & administration , Mexico , History, 20th Century , Humans , Social Justice/history
5.
An. R. Acad. Nac. Farm. (Internet) ; 90(1): 139-147, Ene-Mar, 2024. ilus
Article in Spanish | IBECS | ID: ibc-232339

ABSTRACT

Utilizando como fuente principal la documentación conservada en los Colegios Oficiales de Farmacéuticos de Madrid y Toledo, la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, la sección de África en el Archivo General de la Administración y la prensa períodica local, en particular la impresa en Salamanca y Santa Isabel (Guinea), reconstruimos la biografía del farmacéutico Juan Vegue Martín, desde su tierra natal en la comarca salmantina de Guijuelo hasta los últimos datos conocidos, en los territorios coloniales de la Guinea Española. Una biografía que puede servir como estudio de caso para otros farmacéuticos rurales, de vida nómada, que vivieron -y sufrieron- los años de la Guerra Civil española.(AU)


Using as main source the documentation kept in the Official Colleges of Pharmacists of Madrid and Toledo, the University of Santiago de Compostela, the section of Africa in the General Archive of the Administration and the local periodical press, particularly the one printed in Salamanca and Santa Isabel (Guinea), we reconstruct the biography of the pharmacist Juan Vegue Martín, from his homeland in the Guijuelo region of Salamanca to the latest known data, in the colonial territories of Spanish Guinea. A biography that can serve as a case study for other rural pharmacists, with a nomadic life, who lived through -and suffered- the years of the Spanish Civil War.(AU)


Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Pharmacy , Pharmacists , History, 19th Century , Pharmacists/history , History, 20th Century , Spain
6.
Can J Nurs Res ; 56(2): 134-150, 2024 Jun.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37802101

ABSTRACT

Rural and remote communities of Western Canada have struggled to recruit and retain nursing professionals since the turn of the twentieth century. Existing literature has identified the unique challenges of rural nursing due to the shifting context of rural and remote nursing practice. The objective of this narrative review is to explore the history of rural and remote nursing to better understand the contextual influences shaping rural nursing shortages in Western Canada. This narrative review compared 27 sources of scholarly and historical evidence on the nature of rural nursing practices and recruitment and retention methods following the First World War until 2023. The findings suggest that the complex nature of rural nursing practice is a consistent challenge that has intersected with the long-standing power inequities that are inherent in rural marginalization, political influences, the nursing profession, social structures, and organizational design, to perpetuate rural nursing shortages throughout the past century. Integration and collaboration are needed to reduce systemic marginalization and develop effective and sustainable solutions to reduce nursing shortages in rural and remote areas of Western Canada.

7.
Popul Stud (Camb) ; : 1-21, 2023 Dec 13.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38088169

ABSTRACT

Socio-economic differences in mortality are among the most pervasive characteristics of Western societies. While the mortality gradient by income is well established for the period after 1970, knowledge about the origins of this gradient is still rudimentary. We analyse the association between income and cause-specific adult mortality during the period 1905-2014 in an area of southern Sweden, using competing-risk hazard models with individual-level longitudinal data for over 2.2 million person-years and over 35,000 deaths. We find that the present-day income gradient in adult mortality emerged only in the period after the Second World War and did so for the leading causes of death and for men and women largely simultaneously.

8.
Med Hist ; 67(3): 193-210, 2023 07.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37668376

ABSTRACT

This article advances historical understandings of health, veterinary medicine and livestock agriculture by examining how, in mid-twentieth-century Britain, the diseases of livestock were made collectively knowable. During this period, the state extended its gaze beyond a few, highly impactful notifiable diseases to a host of other threats to livestock health. The prime mechanism through which this was achieved was the disease survey. Paralleling wider developments in survey practices, it grew from small interwar beginnings into a hugely expensive, wide-ranging state veterinary project that created a new conception of the nation's livestock as a geographical aggregation of animals in varying states of health. This article traces the disease survey's entanglements with dairy cows, farming practices, veterinary professional politics and government agendas. It shows that far from a neutral reflection of reality, surveys both represented and perpetuated specific versions of dairy cow health, varieties of farming practice and visions of the veterinary professional role. At first, their findings proved influential, but over time they found it harder to discipline their increasingly complex human, animal and disease subjects, resulting in unconvincing representations of reality that led ultimately to their marginalization.


Subject(s)
Livestock , Politics , Animals , Cattle , Female , Humans
9.
J Hist Med Allied Sci ; 78(4): 341-351, 2023 Sep 23.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37145418

ABSTRACT

From the stress of burnout to the gratification of camaraderie, medicine is suffused with emotions that educators, administrators, and reformers have sought to shape. Yet historians of medicine have only begun to analyze how emotions have structured health care work. This introductory essay frames a special issue on health care practitioners' emotions in the twentieth-century United Kingdom and United States. We argue that the massive bureaucratic and scientific changes in medicine after the Second World War helped to reshape affective aspects of care. The articles in this issue emphasize the intersubjectivity of feelings in healthcare settings and the mutually constitutive relationship between patients' and providers' emotions. Bridging the history of medicine with the history of emotion demonstrates how emotions are instilled rather than innate, social as well as personal, and, above all else, change over time. The articles reckon with the power dynamics of healthcare. They address the policies and practices that institutions, organizations, and governments have implemented to shape, govern, or manage the affective experiences and well-being of healthcare workers. And they point to important new directions in the history of medicine.


Subject(s)
Emotions , Health Facilities , Humans , United States , United Kingdom , Politics , Delivery of Health Care
10.
J Hist Med Allied Sci ; 78(2): 149-170, 2023 Apr 07.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36866431

ABSTRACT

In the second half of the nineteenth century, scientific and technological developments in surgery permitted safer procedures to be carried out. Theoretically, therefore, children whose lives would otherwise have been blighted by disease could be saved by timely operative interference. The reality was more complicated, however, as this article shows. Through an exploration of British and American surgical textbooks and an in-depth analysis of the child surgical patient base at one London general hospital, the tensions between the possibilities and the actualities of surgery on children can be examined for the first time. Hearing the child's voice through case notes allows both a restoration of these complex patients to the history of medicine and a questioning of the wider application of science and technology to working-class bodies, situations, and environments which resist such treatment.


Subject(s)
Medicine , Child , Humans , History, 20th Century , History, 19th Century , Hearing , London
11.
J Hist Neurosci ; 32(2): 71-80, 2023.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36947465

ABSTRACT

To further our understanding of the transformations of the modern, globalized world, historical research concerning the twentieth century must acknowledge the tremendous impact that science and technology exerted and continue to exert on political, economic, military, and social developments. To better comprehend a global history of science, it is also crucial to include Germany's most prominent research organization: The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (MPG). Despite the existence of numerous institute chronicles and selected anniversary editions, the overall development of the MPG-historically situated in more than 80 institutes with more than 250 research service departments (of which approximately 50 have reached into the wider field of neuroscience, behavioral science, and cognitive science)-it remains largely terra incognita from a scholarly perspective. From June 2014 to December 2022, the Research Program on the History of the Max Planck Society (GMPG) opened previously neglected vistas on contemporary history, academic politics, and economic developments of the Federal Republic of Germany and its international relations by raising questions such as these: Who were the key scientific actors? In what networks did they work? In what fields had the MPG paved the way for cutting-edge innovations? What were its successes and where did it fail? In what ways were its institutional structures connected to its scientific achievements and its historical legacies? What is specific about the MPG in comparison to other national institutions in and outside of Germany? These questions relate to the emerging interdisciplinary field of the neurosciences. They refer in part to the MPG's founding years-from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s-which faced significant challenges for a "normalization process" in biomedical research and the burgeoning field of neuroscience. This special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences is composed of an introduction, five articles, and two neuroscience history interviews. It reflects on the multifold dimensions of behavioral psychology, brain research, and cognitive science developments at the MPG since its beginning through the reopening of several former Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. After World War II, the extra-university research society-named in honor of physicist Max Planck (1858-1947)-was eventually established in the British Occupation Zone in 1946, in the American Zone in 1948, and in 1949 in the French Zone, unifying the MPG as the successor umbrella organization of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (KWIs), now transformed into Max Planck Institutes. Chronologically, the research period covered in this special issue ranges from 1948 to 2002.


Subject(s)
Biomedical Research , Neurosciences , Humans , History, 20th Century , Neurosciences/history , Germany , Academies and Institutes
12.
J Hist Neurosci ; 32(2): 81-122, 2023.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36971775

ABSTRACT

The development of the brain sciences (Hirnforschung) in the Max Planck Society (MPG) during the early decades of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was influenced by the legacy of its precursor institution, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (KWG). The KWG's brain science institutes, along with their intramural psychiatry and neurology research programs, were of considerable interest to the Western Allies and former administrators of the German science and education systems in their plans to rebuild the extra-university research society-first in the British Occupation Zone and later in the American and French Occupation Zones. This formation process occurred under the physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) as acting president, and the MPG was named in his honor when it was formally established in 1948. In comparison to other international developments in the brain sciences, it was neuropathology as well as neurohistology that initially dominated postwar brain research activities in West Germany. In regard to its KWG past, at least four historical factors can be identified that explain the dislocated structural and social features of the MPG during the postwar period: first, the disruption of previously existing interactions between German brain scientists and international colleagues; second, the German educational structures that countered interdisciplinary developments through their structural focus on medical research disciplines during the postwar period; third, the moral misconduct of earlier KWG scientists and scholars during the National Socialism period; and, fourth, the deep rupture that appeared through the forced migration of many Jewish and oppositional neuroscientists who sought to find exile after 1933 in countries where they had already held active collaborations since the 1910s and 1920s. This article examines several trends in the MPG's disrupted relational processes as it sought to grapple with its broken past, beginning with the period of reinauguration of relevant Max Planck Institutes in brain science and culminating with the establishment of the Presidential Research Program on the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism in 1997.


Subject(s)
Biomedical Research , Neurology , Neurosciences , Humans , History, 20th Century , National Socialism , Brain , Germany
13.
J Hist Neurosci ; 32(2): 148-172, 2023.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34157248

ABSTRACT

Dr. Wolf Singer (b. 1943) is one of Germany's most renowned brain researchers and neurophysiologists. His accomplishments in the creation of new research centers for neuroscience as well as his commitment to European scientific organizations for integrative brain research are highly valued as significant moments of advancement in the neurosciences. Before his appointment as a scientific member of the Max Planck Society and director at the Frankfurt Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, he gained deep insight into the chances and pitfalls of translational initiatives at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. From the late 1950s onward, the institute adapted to emerging international trends and successfully integrated neurochemistry, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy into the fledgling interdisciplinary field of neuroscience. This agenda of reorientation was an undertaking of Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt, Detlev Ploog, Gerd Peters, and Horst Jatzkewitz, among others. In the 1970s, Munich's laboratories attracted scientists from several countries in Europe and abroad. This article examines whether specific styles of conducting (neuro)science research existed in the Max Planck Society.


Subject(s)
Neurology , Humans , Brain , History, 20th Century , Neurophysiology/history , Germany
14.
J Hist Neurosci ; 32(2): 198-217, 2023.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34129431

ABSTRACT

Dr. Bert Sakmann (b. 1942) studied at the Universities of Tuebingen, Freiburg, Berlin, Paris, and Munich, graduating in 1967. Much of his professional life has been spent in various institutes of the Max Planck Society. In 1971, a British Council Fellowship took him to the Department of Biophysics of University College London to work with Bernard Katz (1911-2003). In 1974, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Goettingen and, with Erwin Neher (b. 1944) at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, began work that would transform cellular biology and neuroscience, resulting in the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In 2008, Dr. Sakmann returned to Munich, where he headed the research group "Cortical Columns in Silico" at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried. Here, their group discovered the cell-type specific sensory activation patterns in different layers of a column in the vibrissal area of rodents' somatosensory cortices.


Subject(s)
Medicine , Neurosciences , Male , Humans , History, 20th Century , Germany , Nobel Prize , Neurobiology
15.
Temperamentum (Granada) ; 19(1)2023. graf
Article in Spanish | IBECS | ID: ibc-ADZ-372

ABSTRACT

En una época de precariedad sanitaria e inexistencia de camas hospitalarias, la capital de la provincia leonesa, siguiendo la estela de lo que ocurría en el resto del país, asistió, en la segunda mitad de los años sesenta del siglo XX, a la construcción de cinco hospitales, uno de titularidad pública y cuatro de titularidad privada, a los que dedicaremos este artículo. Objetivo principal: Evaluar la importancia de la década de los sesenta del siglo XX en el desarrollo sanitario de la capital de la provincia española de León. Metodología: Se ha realizado un estudio histórico descriptivo de las instalaciones sanitarias al inicio y al final de la década. Resultados principales: Se dotó de más de 900 camas sanitarias de titularidad privada y 280 de titularidad pública, además de un hospital antituberculoso y todo ello en el corto periodo de diez años. En solo cinco años, la oferta de camas privadas prácticamente se triplicó. Conclusión principal: La sanidad leonesa dio un salto cuantitativo y cualitativo para ofrecer a los ciudadanos instalaciones hospitalarias de titularidad privada que complementarían, en su caso, a la Seguridad Social y competirían con ella en la oferta de especialidades médicas y tecnología. (AU)


In the second half of the sixties of the twentieth century during the period of health precariousness and lack of hospital beds, the capital of the province of León, which kept up with the other cities of Spain, put up five hospitals, on the one hand, a hospital of public ownership, and the other, four hospitals of private ownership, which will be looked into this article. Main target: Analysing the importance of the sixties of the twentieth century during the health development of the capital of the Spanish province of León. Methodology: We have made a developing a historical-descriptive study of the sanitary facilities at the beginning and end of this decade. Main results: 900 hospital beds of private ownership and 280 of public ownership, besides an antitubercular hospital were put up in so short a period of ten years. In five years, the amount of private beds almost tripled. Main conclusion: The health service of León made a quantitative and qualitative leap, which provides the citizens hospital facilities of private ownership. This will be complementary with social security and will compare with her in the amount of medical specialities and technology. (AU)


Subject(s)
Humans , Hospital Bed Capacity , History , Hospitals , Public Health , Technology , Spain
16.
Hist. ciênc. saúde-Manguinhos ; 30: e2023055, 2023.
Article in Spanish | LILACS | ID: biblio-1520966

ABSTRACT

Resumen Este artículo estudia la profesionalización de la odontología en Colombia en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Esta historia no puede comprenderse en todas sus dimensiones si se dejan de lado las tensiones entre los practicantes con diploma y los sin diploma. Como resultado de estas tensiones, los odontólogos ganaron autonomía profesional. Analizamos solicitudes de licencia para ejercer sin título profesional, entre ellas las de algunas mujeres. Los hallazgos muestran la transmisión de conocimientos por fuera de la enseñanza formal, el ejercicio sin título y sin restricciones por parte de un gran número de odontólogos "permitidos" que se enfrentaron a una pesada y centralizada burocracia diplomada.


Abstract This paper addresses the professionalization of dentistry in Colombia during the first half of the twentieth century. To fully comprehend such a process, we must consider the tensions between the practice of non-certified and certified dentistry. As an outcome of such tensions, dentists began to acquire professional autonomy. We analyze applications for license files to practice dentistry without a degree, some of which were of women. The findings show the informal transfer of knowledge outside formal apprenticeship and the unrestricted practice of dentistry by many non-professionals but "permitted" dentists who faced a centralized and powerful professional bureaucracy.


Subject(s)
Professional Practice/standards , Dentistry , Colombia , History, 20th Century
17.
Article in Spanish | IBECS | ID: ibc-230009

ABSTRACT

En una época de precariedad sanitaria e inexistencia de camas hospitalarias, la capital de la provincia leonesa, siguiendo la estela de lo que ocurría en el resto del país, asistió, en la segunda mitad de los años sesenta del siglo XX, a la construcción de cinco hospitales, uno de titularidad pública y cuatro de titularidad privada, a los que dedicaremos este artículo. Objetivo principal: Evaluar la importancia de la década de los sesenta del siglo XX en el desarrollo sanitario de la capital de la provincia española de León. Metodología: Se ha realizado un estudio histórico descriptivo de las instalaciones sanitarias al inicio y al final de la década. Resultados principales: Se dotó de más de 900 camas sanitarias de titularidad privada y 280 de titularidad pública, además de un hospital antituberculoso y todo ello en el corto periodo de diez años. En solo cinco años, la oferta de camas privadas prácticamente se triplicó. Conclusión principal: La sanidad leonesa dio un salto cuantitativo y cualitativo para ofrecer a los ciudadanos instalaciones hospitalarias de titularidad privada que complementarían, en su caso, a la Seguridad Social y competirían con ella en la oferta de especialidades médicas y tecnología (AU)


In the second half of the sixties of the twentieth century during the period of health precariousness and lack of hospital beds, the capital of the province of León, which kept up with the other cities of Spain, put up five hospitals, on the one hand, a hospital of public ownership, and the other, four hospitals of private ownership, which will be looked into this article. Main target: Analysing the importance of the sixties of the twentieth century during the health development of the capital of the Spanish province of León. Methodology: We have made a developing a historical-descriptive study of the sanitary facilities at the beginning and end of this decade. Main results: 900 hospital beds of private ownership and 280 of public ownership, besides an antitubercular hospital were put up in so short a period of ten years. In five years, the amount of private beds almost tripled. Main conclusion: The health service of León made a quantitative and qualitative leap, which provides the citizens hospital facilities of private ownership. This will be complementary with social security and will compare with her in the amount of medical specialities and technology (AU)


Subject(s)
Humans , History, 20th Century , Hospitals, Urban/history , Hospitals, Private/history , Hospital Bed Capacity , Spain
18.
Hist. ciênc. saúde-Manguinhos ; 29(3): 813-831, jul.-set. 2022. graf
Article in Spanish | LILACS | ID: biblio-1405035

ABSTRACT

Resumen El artículo tiene por objetivo dar a conocer parte de un proceso de investigación sobre la cultura material de la enseñanza científica, en particular de las ciencias naturales, en la Argentina, entre la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX. A través de algunas herramientas metodológicas que resultaron útiles para manejar las diversas fuentes, como la perspectiva biográfica de la vida cultural de los objetos, la noción de circulación de conocimientos e instrumentos científicos, se analiza el complejo entramado de relaciones entre los artefactos, los saberes y las prácticas científico-educativas locales. En este artículo se exponen algunos indicadores y ejemplos de los materiales científicos estudiados.


Abstract The article presents part of a research process on the material culture of science education, particularly natural sciences, in Argentina, between the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. We used some methodological tools that were useful to manage the various sources, such as the biographical perspective of the cultural life of objects, the notion of circulation of knowledge and scientific instruments, the complex network of relationships between artifacts, knowledge, and local scientific-educational practices. This article shows some indicators and examples of the scientific materials studied.


Subject(s)
Science/education , Information Dissemination , Internationality , Anthropology, Cultural , Argentina , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century
19.
J Hist Biol ; 55(2): 285-320, 2022 08.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35984594

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to provide a fresh historical perspective on the debates on vitalism and holism in Germany by analyzing the work of the zoologist Hans Spemann (1869-1941) in the interwar period. Following up previous historical studies, it takes the controversial question about Spemann's affinity to vitalistic approaches as a starting point. The focus is on Spemann's holistic research style, and on the shifting meanings of Spemann's concept of an organizer. It is argued that the organizer concept unfolded multiple layers of meanings (biological, philosophical, and popular) during the 1920s and early 1930s. A detailed analysis of the metaphorical dynamics in Spemann's writings sheds light on the subtle vitalistic connotations of his experimental work. How Spemann's work was received by contemporary scientists and philosophers is analyzed briefly, and Spemann's holism is explored in the broader historical context of the various issues about reductionism and holism and related methodological questions that were so prominently discussed not only in Germany in the 1920s.


Subject(s)
Organizers, Embryonic , Vitalism , Germany , Vitalism/history
20.
SSM Popul Health ; 18: 101126, 2022 Jun.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35669890

ABSTRACT

Socioeconomic inequalities and their evolution in different historical contexts have been widely studied. However, some of their dimensions remain relatively unexplored, such as the role played by socioeconomic status in the trajectory of biological living standards, especially net nutritional status. The main objective of this article is to analyze whether the power of socioeconomic status (SES) to explain differences in the biological dimensions of human well-being (in this case, adult height, a reliable metric for health and nutritional status) has increased or diminished over time. Educational attainment and occupational category have been used as two different proxies for the SES of Spanish men and women born between 1940 and 1994, thus covering a historical period in Spain characterized by remarkable socioeconomic development and a marked increase in mean adult height. Our data is drawn from nine waves of the Spanish National Health Survey and the Spanish sample of two waves of the European Health Interview Survey (ENSE) for the period 1987 to 2017 (N = 73,699 citizens aged 23-47). A multivariate regression analysis has been conducted, showing that, as a whole, height differentials by educational attainment have diminished over time, whereas differences by occupational category of household heads have largely persisted. These results indicate the need for further qualification when describing the process of convergence in biological well-being indicators across social groups. For instance, the progressive enrollment of a greater proportion of the population into higher educational levels may lead us to underestimate the real differences between socioeconomic groups, while other proxies of SES still point to the persistence of such differences.

SELECTION OF CITATIONS
SEARCH DETAIL
...