Historical roots of social epidemiology: socioeconomic gradients in health and contextual analysis
Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: Sir—In recent years, social epidemiologists have brought to the fore two seemingly new observations: Together, these observations offer important challenges to aetiologic explanations and policy interventions. But are these observations in fact new? Or is it that contemporary scientists—and perhaps policy makers—are once again willing to engage with questions initially raised during the formative days of epidemiology as a discipline, in the early 19th century?5 Consider, for example, research conducted by one of the earliest and foremost investigators linking population health to political economy: Louis René Villermé (1782–1863).6–7 A French physician and liberal supporter of the free market, in the mid-1820s Villermé creatively employed newly amassed and unprecedented Parisian census data to produce a novel finding. His classic 1826 study demonstrated empirically, for the first time for any city anywhere, that variations in annual mortality rates across neighbourhoods—even in non-epidemic years—were patterned by poverty and wealth, as opposed to the ‘natural environment’ of Hippocratic doctrine.8 Moreover, death rates not only were highest among areas whose residents paid the least in ‘untaxed rents’, a type of tax paid only by the wealthy, but also clearly exhibited a continuous socioeconomic gradient (Table 1).
DOI: 10.1093/ije/30.4.899
Author: Nancy Krieger
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2097197667