Economics, Health, and Post-Industrial Society

Two hundred years ago the industrial revolution was figuratively and literally beginning to pick up steam. In a few Western countries agricultural advances, which came faster than population growth, enabled some men and women to escape from grinding poverty. Life for most, however, was still “nasty, brutish, and short.” Infant mortality rates of 200 or 300 per 1000 births were the rule, and life expectancy in Western Europe was not very different from what it had been under the Romans. The great majority of men and women worked on farms, producing barely enough to feed themselves plus a small surplus for the relatively few workers engaged in the production of other goods and services. Widows and orphans, the sick, the elderly, and the destitute relied primarily on family and church for help in their time of need…