Andrew Cherlin, Benjamin H. Griswold, III, Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University. Co-sponsored by the Population Studies Seminar.
About the Conference Health policy is often equated with health insurance and programs explicitly linked with the provision of medical and health services. However, many public policies and expenditures can and do affect population health and health disparities, even though health is neither a central goal nor an anticipated side effect of these efforts.
Overview Traditional measures of poverty are based on income: if income is below a given threshold, then the family is determined to be poor. Some economists have suggested that a family's well-being is better measured by their total spending rather than their total income. That is, some families can have a satisfactory standard of living even if they have low current income. This may be due to the fact that the family can support consumption by drawing down assets.
