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The spirit level : why greater equality makes societies stronger

TLDR
The strong version of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's argument in The Spirit Level implies that President Obama's fight to reform health care was pointless as discussed by the authors, and that extending the availability of health insurance cannot substantially improve Americans’ health.
Abstract
The strong version of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s argument in The Spirit Level implies that President Obama’s fight to reform health care was pointless. Extending the availability of health insurance cannot substantially improve Americans’ health. Instead, the president would make us all happier, healthier, and longer-lived, their logic suggests, if he could get the richest, say, 5 percent of Americans to leave the country.

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Neural circuitry and precision medicines for mental disorders: are they compatible?

TL;DR: Will such projects, at a cost of at least $10 billion, lead to precision medications for mental disorders, or further diminish funding for clinical care and research?

Economic globalization, inequality and body mass index: a cross-national analysis of 127 countries

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated to what extent the worldwide increase in body mass index (BMI) has been affected by economic globalization and inequality using time-series and longitudinal cross-national analysis of 127 countries.
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Income inequality and the developing child: Is it all relative?

TL;DR: The role of subjective social status in explaining why some low-income children appear to suffer when growing up alongside more affluent peers is explored, alongside a call for additional research focused on how children come to understand, and respond to, their perceived social status.
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Living Environment Matters: Relationships Between Neighborhood Characteristics and Health of the Residents in a Dutch Municipality

TL;DR: The findings can be used to support development of integrated health policies targeting broader determinants of health, and improving safety, social cohesion and decreasing traffic nuisance in disadvantaged neighborhoods might be a promising way to improve the health of residents and reduce health inequalities.
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Physical and situational inequality on airplanes predicts air rage

TL;DR: It is suggested that physical and situational inequality are built into people’s everyday environments—such as the modern airplane—and that exposure to these forms of inequality can trigger antisocial behavior, and it is shown that physical design that highlights inequality cantrigger antissocial behavior on airplanes.
References
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Book

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

TL;DR: In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives as discussed by the authors, which is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research.
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Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England

TL;DR: The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer.
Posted Content

Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction: Exploring Different Determinants Across Groups in Society

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 90,000 observations in 70 countries and show that only a small number of factors, such as openness, business climate, postcommunism, the number of chambers in parliament, Christian majority, and infant mortality robustly influence life satisfaction across countries.
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Social Trust and Fractionalization: A Possible Reinterpretation

TL;DR: In this paper, the importance of fractionalization for the creation of social trust is examined and the determinants of trust can be divided into two categories: those affecting individuals' trust radii and those affecting social polarization.
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Do Neoliberal Economic Policies Kill or Save Lives

TL;DR: The authors found that open international trade policies, low-inflation macroeconomic environments, and market-oriented property rights regimes promote human development across the world, even when controlling for countries' economic performance.