Individual Wealth Rank, Community Wealth Inequality, and Self-Reported Adult Poor Health: A Test of Hypotheses with Panel Data (2002-2006) from Native Amazonians, Bolivia

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that economic inequality in a community harms the health of a person. Using panel data from a small-scale, preindustrial rural society, we test whether individual wealth rank and village wealth inequality affects self-reported poor health in a foraging-farming native Amazonian society. A person's wealth rank was negatively but weakly associated with self-reported morbidity. Each step up/year in the village wealth hierarchy reduced total self-reported days ill by 0.4 percent. The Gini coefficient of village wealth inequality bore a positive association with self-reported poor health that was large in size, but not statistically significant. We found small village wealth inequality, and evidence that individual economic rank did not change. The modest effects may have to do with having used subjective rather than objective measures of health, having small village wealth inequality, and with the possibly true modest effect of a person's wealth rank on health in a small-scale, kin-based society. Finally, we also found that an increase in mean individual wealth by village was related to worse self-reported health. As the Tsimane' integrate into the market economy, their possibilities of wealth accumulation rise, which may affect their well-being. Our work contributes to recent efforts in biocultural anthropology to link the study of social inequalities, human biology, and human-environment interactions.

Sibling composition and children's anthropometric indicators of nutritional status: Evidence from native Amazonians in Bolivia

“…One possible explanation may pertain to the fact that Tsimane' are severely resource-constrained compared with people in industrial societies, but they also live in a more egalitarian society (Undurraga et al 2010). Tsimane' are linked by a wide kinship network marked by ubiquitous sharing and reciprocity.…”

The relationship between relative deprivation and adult nutritional status in rural Zambia

“…Small-scale studies that explored statistically the relationship between economic inequality and adult health in a developing country context are rarely found in the literature other than those from rural Bolivia. Likewise, these studies did not find a statistically significant association between village income inequality and adult health outcomes (Godoy et al, 2005;Undurraga et al, 2010) but did find a significant relationship between adult health and social rank and wealth rank (ReyesGarcia et al, 2008(ReyesGarcia et al, , 2009Undurraga et al, 2010). These results together with the findings from this study suggest that perhaps inequalities need to be evaluated using a variety of measures (both subjective and objective) before we can determine whether or not ''[r]elativities and comparisons beyond the local seem more important than purely local ones'' (Wilkinson andPickett, 2007: p 1975).…”

“…A number of individual-level variables were controlled for during regression analysis including the age, gender, marital status, educational level, and physical health status of each household head. Past studies exploring the link between subjective SES or objective measures of relative deprivation and health controlled for many of these same variables in their regression models (e.g., see Cohen et al, 2008;Kondo et al, 2008;Reyes-Garcia et al, 2008;Subramanyam et al, 2009;Undurraga et al, 2010;Wolff et al, 2010). Age represents how old the individual was (years) at the time of survey interviews.…”

“…Following a similar strategy as Undurraga et al (2010), household heads were asked about a number of important household assets including the number of cattle, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, ox carts, ploughs, cotton sprayers, hoes, axes, bicycles, sewing machines, couches, mattresses, wood chairs and tables, radios, and cell phones the household owned. The number of each asset owned by the household was multiplied by its local market price and then divided by the number of people living in the household at the time of the interview.…”

“…They found a positive relationship between lower subjective SES and both mental health outcomes in lowincome adults. In studies from rural Bolivia, Reyes-Garcia et al (2008) established that relative social rank (a subjective measure) was positively associated with male adult nutritional status (see also Reyes-Garcia et al, 2009) and Undurraga et al (2010) found that individual wealth rank (an objective measure) was negatively related with selfrated poor health in their longitudinal study.…”