Human Biology and Social Inequality

About this book

Measures of biological variation have long been associated with many indices of social inequality. Data on health, nutrition, fertility, mortality, physical fitness, intellectual performance and a range of heritable biological markers show the ubiquity of such patterns across time, space and population.

This volume reviews the current evidence for the strength of such linkages and the biological and social mechanisms that underlie them. A major theme is the relationship between the proximate determinants of these linkages and their longer-term significance for biologically selective social mobility. This book therefore addresses the question of how social stratification mediates processes of natural selection in human groups. Data like this pose difficult and sensitive issues for health policy and developments in this area and in eugenics are reviewed for industrialised and developing countries.

Contents

1. Human biology and social inequality Simon Strickland and Prakash Shetty; 2. Social inequalities and health in the contemporary world: comparative overview Sally MacIntyre; 3. Accumulation of health risks across social groups in a national longitudinal study Chris Power and Sharon Matthews; 4. Equity, social cohesion and health Richard G. Wilkinson; 5. Growth and maturation problems of children and social inequality during economic liberalisation in Central and Eastern Europe Otto G. Eiben; 6. Social inequalities in the re-emergence of infectious disease John D. H. Porter and Jessica A. Ogden; 7. Environmental health, social inequality and biological differences Lawrence M. Schell and Stefan A. Czerwinski; 8. Educational potential and attainment: long-term implications of childhood under-nutrition Sara Stinson; 9. Affluence in developing countries and natural selection in humans Kerin O'Dea; 10. Physical activity, sport, social status and Darwinian fitness Robert M. Malina; 11. Biological correlates of social and geographical mobility in humans: an overview C. G. Nicholas Mascie-Tyalor; 12. How female reproductive decisions cause social inequality in male reproductive fitness: evidence from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany Eckhart Voland and Athanasios Chasiotis; 13. Environmental constraints, social inequality and reproductive success. A case-study in Morocco Emile Crognier; 14. The emergence of health and social inequalities in the archaeological record Mark Nathan Cohen; 15. Eugenics and population policies A. H. Bittles and Y-Y. Chew; 16. The policy implications of health inequalities in developing countries Carolyn Stephens; 17. Policy options for managing health inequalities in industrial and post-industrial countries Yoav Ben-Shlomo and Michael G. Marmot; Index.

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