Wealth, health and inequality in Agta foragers.

Abigail E Page ORCID logo ; Milagros Ruiz ; Mark Dyble ORCID logo ; Daniel Major-Smith ; Andrea B Migliano ; Sarah Myers ; (2023) Wealth, health and inequality in Agta foragers. Evolution, medicine, and public health, 11 (1). pp. 149-162. ISSN 2050-6201 DOI: 10.1093/emph/eoad015
Copy

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: There is significant evidence from large-scale, industrial and post-industrial societies that greater income and wealth inequality is negatively associated with both population health and increasing health inequalities. However, whether such relationships are inevitable and should be expected to impact the health of small-scale societies as they become more market-integrated is less clear. METHODOLOGY: Here, using mixed-effect models, we explore the relationship between health, wealth, wealth inequality and health inequalities in a small-scale foraging population from the Philippines, the Agta. RESULTS: Across 11 camps, we find small to moderate degrees of wealth inequality (maximal Gini Coefficient 0.44) which is highest in the most permanent camps, where individuals engage more heavily in the formal market. However, in both adults (n = 161) and children (n = 215), we find little evidence that either wealth or wealth inequality associates with ill health, except for one measure of nutritional condition-red blood cell count. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: We interpret these results in the light of high levels of cooperation among the Agta which may buffer against the detrimental effects of wealth inequality documented in industrial and post-industrial societies. We observe little intergenerational wealth transmission, highlighting the fluid nature of wealth, and thus wealth inequality, particularly in mobile communities. The deterioration of nutritional status, as indicated by red blood cell counts, requires further investigation before concluding the Agta's extensive cooperation networks may be beginning to breakdown in the face of increasing inequality.


picture_as_pdf
Page-etal-2023-Wealth-health-and-inequality-in.pdf
subject
Published Version
Available under Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0

View Download

Atom BibTeX OpenURL ContextObject in Span Multiline CSV OpenURL ContextObject Dublin Core Dublin Core MPEG-21 DIDL Data Cite XML EndNote HTML Citation JSON MARC (ASCII) MARC (ISO 2709) METS MODS RDF+N3 RDF+N-Triples RDF+XML RIOXX2 XML Reference Manager Refer Simple Metadata ASCII Citation EP3 XML
Export

Downloads