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The Healthy Country?: A History of Life & Death in New Zealand
Did Maori or Europeans live longer when Captain James Cook arrived in New Zealand in 1769? Why were Pakeha New Zealanders the healthiest, longest-lived people on the face of the globe for 80 years--and why did Maori not enjoy the same life expectancy? Why were New Zealanders' health and longevity surpassed by other nations in the late 20th century? Through lively text and quantitative analysis presented in accessible graphics, the authors answer these questions by analyzing the impact of nutrition and disease, immigration and unemployment, alcohol and obesity, and medicine and vaccination. The result is a powerful argument about why people live and why people die in New Zealand--and what might be done about it. "The Healthy Country?" is important reading for anyone interested in the story of New Zealanders and a decisive contribution to current international debates about health, disease, and medicine.
296 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2015
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November 26, 2022
This book contains a great deal of information about health in the last 200 years, with a focus on New Zealand, but with global data also. The news is mostly good. Global average life expectancy was something like 28 years in 1800, influenced largely by heavy infant and child mortality. Life expectancy appears to have been broadly similar for millennia, although data is sparse. Life expectancy then grew slowly world wide in the 19th century, but quite quickly in NZ. It kept going up in the 20th century, reaching something between 70 and 80 years in NZ by 2010s, depending on ethnicity and gender. Although there is a feeling that it must reach some kind of biological plateau at some point, there is no evidence that we are near that plateau (at least not when the book was published in 2014), as life expectancies continue to rise.
The main reasons: (19th century) improving diet, improving living conditions, a better understanding and treatment of infectious diseases. NZ did particularly well in these, plus had a lack of crowding, which helped it to have the highest life expectancy in the world for about 70 years. (20th century) more of the above, a reduction in tobacco use, a reduction in animal fat intake, improvements in medical understanding and treatments. There is an idea of the secularisation of health and illness - that it is something that people (and society) can do something about - it is not just the will of god(s) that one is sick.
Maori life expectancy fell in the 19th century, as land was taken from them, and they were exposed to new (for them) infectious diseases. It improved hugely in the 20th century, but still lags behind non-Maori life expectancy.
There is a lot of information, and sometimes it is quite readable, even fascinating, but sometimes it dragged. It seems to be pitched mostly at the general reader, but there were times when I didn't know what they were trying to say. Statements like "It makes sense, intuitively, that the long history of life expectancy will follow a sigmoid curve" tell a tale (page 228). I'm no dummy, but I don't know what a sigmoid curve is, so my intuition is not the same as the authors' here.
The main reasons: (19th century) improving diet, improving living conditions, a better understanding and treatment of infectious diseases. NZ did particularly well in these, plus had a lack of crowding, which helped it to have the highest life expectancy in the world for about 70 years. (20th century) more of the above, a reduction in tobacco use, a reduction in animal fat intake, improvements in medical understanding and treatments. There is an idea of the secularisation of health and illness - that it is something that people (and society) can do something about - it is not just the will of god(s) that one is sick.
Maori life expectancy fell in the 19th century, as land was taken from them, and they were exposed to new (for them) infectious diseases. It improved hugely in the 20th century, but still lags behind non-Maori life expectancy.
There is a lot of information, and sometimes it is quite readable, even fascinating, but sometimes it dragged. It seems to be pitched mostly at the general reader, but there were times when I didn't know what they were trying to say. Statements like "It makes sense, intuitively, that the long history of life expectancy will follow a sigmoid curve" tell a tale (page 228). I'm no dummy, but I don't know what a sigmoid curve is, so my intuition is not the same as the authors' here.
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