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IJE Advance Access originally published online on November 24, 2004
International Journal of Epidemiology 2005 34(2):306-308; doi:10.1093/ije/dyh361
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2004; all rights reserved.

Commentary

Commentary: The decline of death—how do we measure and interpret changes in self-reported health across cultures and time?

Richard Mitchell

Research Unit in Health Behaviour and Change, University of Edinburgh, EH8 9AG, UK. E-mail: richard.mitchell@ed.ac.uk

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

A little health now and again is the ailing person's best remedy.

[Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)]

Comparing mortality and morbidity between nations and over time is a complex and often frustrating business and the study reported by Kunst et al.1 is an impressive achievement. In this commentary I would like to speculate as to how we should react to their findings and how we might interpret them, as well as considering some further questions their findings raise.


   Reaction
 
Profound depression seems appropriate. The findings show that (i) not only do about a third of the citizens of these countries still not feel very healthy (table 3) but (ii) poorer and less educated people are still about 2.5–3.0 times more likely to feel ill than richer, better educated people (tables 5, 7). Wide . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Interpretation
 

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