The Importance of the Political and the Social in Explaining Mortality Differentials Among the Countries of the Oecd, 1950–1998

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors present the results of their study on the impact of political, economic, and social changes on mortality in the majority of developed capitalist countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from 1950 to 1998. If politics matters to policy, then they would expect that within each group of countries, sharing similar political traditions, the member countries would have similar public policies. First, the large variations within each group of countries indicate that many other variables besides political variables are influencing the level of public education expenditures. The inequalities in the ex-dictatorial countries were very high at the beginning of the period, when all these countries were under authoritarian or dictatorial regimes. It is interesting to note that the Christian democratic or conservative countries achieved the Swedish infant mortality and life expectancy levels 17 years later, 22 years later, and 10 years later.