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The Great Escape written by Deaton displayed the idea of “The Great Escape” in the sense of the great escape of poverty and inequality. In his book, for the first part, he highlighted several places to show that “many children still just die because they were born in the wrong country.” where mortality gap existed. In the second part, the material living standards and how much each person satisfied with lives are mentioned as in the rich countries, new prosperity, education, innovation are higher than ever, but they bring inequality. For the last part, he talked about what ought to be done and what ought not. Health inequalities, the accessibilities of opportunities and the well-being of people as well as the economic and political institutions matter for escaping poverty. Growth and globalization are looked and concerned as well as the history, progress and future plan for greater escape.
From his book, one of the claim that interested me was that “ infectious diseases among children were important causes of death in poor countries, so people often called it as diseases of poverty.”Is it fair for them? I think it is not. These people have no choice to choose family or places when they were born, they did nothing wrong, and they just happened to be in the society where most of the people were undesirably prefer to live. However, the future of these poor children was badly signified by other people through the data and statistics of high mortality rates, low life expectancy, etc. Therefore, I agree with Deaton who believed that the Great Escape of poor people against diseases was possible and it was also unfair for us to blame chronic diseases that cause huge death rates in rich countries as disease of affluence either.
Another compelling point that I also agree with was that, because of inequality, the escape makes opportunities but not everybody can access them which explains why people say that luck favor some but not others that results in low escape to better health. This inequality involves “health inequalities” in the sense that rich people are treated in world-class medical facilities while poor people are still suffering from hunger. Furthermore, if some people are still dying from same old diseases where we already know how to prevent them , this is a signal that we need a health intervention. For help, people try to provide financial aid to poor people by focusing on volume instead of effectiveness while neglecting the state capacity in managing those funds; consequently, the possibility of poverty reduction and the capacity of health improvement will be lower, but raising the ability in extending the state’s monopoly and capital control where the political institution is becoming more extractive and less responsive to citizens. In short, when people lack of hope for health services, few doctors will go to work and few clinics will be operated which hinder a move to better well-being.
All in all, I think this book could be linked to the lecture mainly in the topic of globalization and inequality. We all realized that globalization enables us to access to more knowledge where it can be transferred to developing countries, or brings business opportunities that could lead to a rapid growth. However, globalization comes with costs and risks that left some people behind. To support, Deaton emphasized that in spite of the fast growers, there has been little or no narrowing of income inequality between countries; for every country with a catch-up story, there has been a country with a left-behind story. The inequalities still exist and could become larger both within and across borders. The coordination failure, dualism and dependence theory might be the reason why some people or countries do not move at the same pace. In some countries the rich are becoming richer, or the poor are becoming poorer, or in some case as an example, some Chinese are moving away from other Chinese. New knowledge and inventions are main keys to progress; however, it destroyed lives of those who depend on old mechanism. Therefore, in this process of growth, the limited resources are continually consumed so the role of economic and political institutions should be inclusive to provide benefits to people. In addition, the supporting of international policy and trade agreements that make globalization work for poor people is required. Therefore, “the desire to escape is always there” but it is not always fulfilled because of inequality. Also, the well-being of the world today depends on who have made the great escape, and who are still waiting or who are the core and peripheral, so it was unsure whether this escape would be satisfied and have a happy ending or not.
Reference List:
Deaton, A. (2013). The Great Escape Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality
