Does being poor mean being less healthy? In the United States, the answer is generally yes: Income and health are intertwined, and the richer you are,\u00a0the\u00a0healthier you\u2019re likely to be.<\/p>\n
Still,\u00a0the link between poverty and poor health isn’t ironclad. Take Costa Rica, where the poorest 25 percent\u00a0of people live longer than their counterparts in the U.S., according to ananalysis\u00a0published this week\u00a0in the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n Costa Rica punches above its weight on many measures of health and social welfare. It\u2019s a middle-income democracy with a population of 4.8 million\u2014about the size\u00a0of Alabama\u2014and a\u00a0per-capita gross domestic product about\u00a0one-fifth that of the U.S.\u00a0In other words, it’s much less wealthy than the U.S. As you would expect, the rich in America enjoy lower mortality rates than do the rich in Costa Rica. But when you look at the other end of the socio-economic scale, the reverse is true.<\/p>\n \u201cPoor people or lower socioeconomic-status people are thinner and less prone to obesity than rich people, while in the U.S., the inverse of that situation is true,\u201d said Luis Rosero-Bixby, a demographer at the Universidad de Costa Rica and lead author of the study.\u00a0Costa Ricans are more likely to adhere to traditional diets and lifestyles that don\u2019t include junk food or cigarettes. Costa Rica\u2019s health care system is not better than that of the U.S., according to\u00a0Rosero-Bixby, but it manages to\u00a0ensure that “the very basic needs are covered.”<\/p>\n While Costa Rica outperforms the U.S. on the health of its poorest, it\u2019s not because the country has greater equality than America. Indeed, the income distribution in Costa Rica concentrates a greater share of wealth at the top, according to the paper. Somehow, though, skewed income doesn\u2019t translate to skewed health outcomes.<\/p>\n The analysis linked census records in both countries with death registries from the 1990s. Matching that kind of data isn\u2019t possible in many places, Rosero-Bixby said, so it\u2019s hard to tell whether the pattern is similar elsewhere. Both countries are, to some extent, outliers. While Costa Ricans are generally healthier and live longer than the country\u2019s income and health spending would predict, the reverse is true in the U.S..<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Does being poor mean being less healthy? In the United States, the answer is generally yes: Income and health are intertwined, and the richer you are,\u00a0the\u00a0healthier you\u2019re likely to be. Still,\u00a0the link between poverty and poor health isn’t ironclad. Take … Continue reading