The Relationship between Globalization and Health Status in the US - Term Paper Example

Relationship between Globalization and Health Status in the U.S. Abstract Impacts of globalization have been started to be felt almost in every sphere of life. Various studies have already attempted to measure effects of globalization beyond economic life. This paper has tried to empirically find out whether health status of the United States is strongly correlated with the extent of integration with other nations. Existing literatures on this issue have failed to reach to a common agreement regarding the impacts of globalization on health status of the people living in a country which has actively participated in this process. This study has found that a very week but positive relationship hold between health status and globalization in case of the United States. Business statistical tools have been used for this empirical study. Introduction Today one of the hottest issues, which is being discussed almost every where in different contexts is “globalization and its impacts”. Today every country across the world has become a part of the vast global village where country barriers in social, political and economic life are becoming lower than before. The impact of globalization has become an interesting area of research for researchers across different fields of study. Globalization mainly implies economic integration of the countries. But the most interesting aspect about this most talked about global trend of the current period is that its impacts have not been confined to the economic sphere of life only. The ongoing trend of internationalization is affecting demographic features including educational and health status along with social and cultural life of the people of the countries which are actively participating in this process. This paper attempts to examine the impact of globalization on the health status. It has been theorized that increasing economic integration among countries would result in higher level of economic growth which would translate into improvement in overall standard of living of the people. If standard of living rises, then it can be expected that this will have positive effect on the health status. Hence, the process of globalization has the potential to increase health status of the people living in a country. It would be quite interesting to find out what actually happens in reality, i.e. whether globalization has truly been able to increase health status. United States is one of the most active participants in the process of globalization. So, it can be hypothesized that as the United States has intensified the process of integration with other countries by removing various types of trade barriers, the country has experienced continuous improvement in the health status of the people living there. But the problem with this kind of hypothesis is that globalization has the potential to increase the threat regarding the spread of infectious diseases. So it would be quite interesting to find out what has actually happened in the United States. In order to check how far globalization have been able to affect the health status of the people living in the United states, an empirical study will be conducted by applying business statistical tools. How business statistics can be used in this study will be elaborately discussed later in this paper. But before that it is necessary to provide a brief review of selected literatures to enhance the level of understanding of the topic under consideration. Review of Literatures To understand the impacts of globalization on health status, it is first necessary to understand the meaning of ‘globalization. Technically speaking, the word ‘globalization’ refers to the process through which the world community gets integrated into a common economic or social system. In other words, it is a process of integrating local and regional aspects into global ones. Meaning of Globalization: Globalization does not refer to integration in one particular field only. Instead, this term is used to imply socio-cultural, economical, political as well as technological integration at the same time. However, frequently, the term globalization is used to refer to national economies’ integration into a global economy by flows of foreign direct investments, trade, flows of capital goods, the process of migration and technology transfer. When an economists use this term, then by this word he wants to imply removal of national barriers for facilitating the flows of goods and services, labour and capital from one country to another. (Hertz, 2-4; Wolf, 10-15; Vietor, 8-10) The process of globalization has got a momentum in the past two decades. In the last two decades technology has made a huge progress and made it very easy for people to travel, communicate or conduct businesses at an international level. In recent times two major forces that are responsible for speeding up the process of globalization are the huge advancements that are made in the filed of telecommunications and development of internet. Advanced telecommunication systems and development of internet have made it possible for the economies to become more connected with each other. As a result, economies have become exposed to more opportunities as well as more competition. (Stiglitz, 3-10; Edwards, 1358 – 1360) Impacts of globalization on heath: As far as the relationship between globalization and health is concerned, WHO (World Trade Organization) states that different manifestations of globalization affect health status. For example, increasing international trade, improving communications at global level, increasing inflows as well as outflows of goods and services as well as of people from one nation to another influence health outcomes. According to WHO, some of these impacts are direct, while some are indirect. Among the direct effects, the most important one is the effect of different types of multilateral trade agreements on the health systems. For example, TRIPS (Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) significantly affect the costs of medicines and drugs as well as their availability. (Globalization and Health) Among the other direct effects, some of the important ones are as follows: Improved communication technologies have made it very easier to alert health authorities of different countries regarding the outbreak of a specific disease. In this globalized era, nations can share health related information very easily. Increasing trade, migration, tourism, on the other hand facilitate the spread of different types of infectious diseases. Some global phenomenon like illegal drug trades which are beyond the control of any particular government also affects health. The indirect effects, on the other hand, come through the effects of globalization on national economy. For example, Trade liberalization along with financial laws affects the level of public expenditure on health care system. (“Globalization and Health”) Although apparently it seems that globalization is helpful in increasing health status, but it would not be right to make a overly simplistic statement by describing globalization as good for health. As stated by WHO, effects of globalization on health can be either good or bad. For instance, in highly developed countries, there exists high level of threats of acquiring several epidemic infections like HIV/AIDs, plague, tuberculosis, etc from less increasing interaction with less developed countries. These rich nations also fear that increasing unhealthy population through migration would increase their expenditure on health systems. It should, however, not be right to overlook the positive effects of migration on the health status of high income nations. It is not always the case that only unhealthy poor people migrate into these countries with a hope to improve their standard of living, very often highly qualified health professions form poorer countries migrate to these developed nations and fulfill the unmet need of skilled professionals in their health systems. (Lee) Methodology The earlier section shows that globalization leads to a complex equation of pros and cons in the health system of the countries, particularly in the rich nations. To examine this aspect in the context of U.S., this paper applies business statistical tools. In the areas of business and economics, statistical techniques are applied quite often for the purpose of analyzing and interpreting various issues related to business and economic decision making. Business statistics are really essential in the decision making procedure it enhances the understanding regarding the sources of variation in certain variables and uncovers different types of pattern and relationships among different variables from the available data. Statistical analyses of data are very important to understand the pattern of relationship between certain variable of the economy, statistical techniques come to great help. (Downing and Clark, 1-2; Kazmier et al. 1) For the purpose of analysis of data, mainly two types of statistical techniques are applied in areas of businesses and economics – descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Each of these categories includes various types of techniques. In case of descriptive statistics, those tools are used which mainly summarize the available numerical data and describe them for their easy interpretation. On most of the occasion, the method of descriptive statistical analysis includes various types of graphical techniques and is mainly based on computational analysis. Inferential statistical analysis employed on those cases when business or economic decisions are required to be made under uncertainties. Inferential statistical analysis includes those techniques which help to make any decision regarding the entire population on the basis of an observed sample, not on the basis of the data for the entire population. In case inferential statistical, probability concepts are required to be incorporated in the techniques used for the purpose of decision making as the decision are made under uncertain conditions. (Downing and Clark, 1-2; Kazmier et al. 3; Daniel and Terrell, 2-3) Some of the major business statistical tools are descriptive data analysis using graphs, charts etc., correlation analysis that examines what kind of relationship holds between two variables in reality, regression analysis which is very essential for estimating impact of certain factors on some variables. Here, to examine the interrelationship between globalization and health status, correlation analysis has been employees. For the purpose of statistical test, the extents of globalization and health status have to be expressed in terms of some measurable variables. Here, to measure the extent of international integration for U.S. one of the major manifestations of globalization, trade liberalization, has been taken under consideration, while to measure health status infant mortality rate has been used. Although level of international trade and infant mortality rate are not alone sufficient to reflect the extent of globalization and health status, accurately, they can serve the current purpose. Given the availability of the data, the period of 2000-2006 has been taken under consideration for this study. Data on total international trade volume including exports as well as imports, and infant mortality rate have been collected for each of the years during the period under consideration. The relevant data has been collected from the reports published by US census bureau and National Center for Health statistics. After collecting relevant data, correlation coefficient between total international trade of U.S. and U.S. infant mortality rate has been calculated. The correlation coefficient will be able to show what kind of relationship hold between these two variables. This study has not conducted any regression analysis as the data set is very small. Findings Figure 1 shows the trend in the international trade for the period of 2000-2006. The following figure shows that after experiencing a slight decline in total trade volume in 2001, the United States has experienced increasing international trade through out the rest of the period. Figure 2 shows the trend in infant mortality rate in U.S. for the period of 2000-2006. The following figure shows that the infant mortality rate has been fluctuated throughout the entire period under consideration. But an interesting feature of this fluctuating trend is that the infant mortality rate never fell below 6 nor exceeded that. It simply implies a lower degree of fluctuation. In 2000, the rate has been stood at a level of 6.9 while in 2006 it became 6.7. While comparing the rate of 2006 with that of 2000, it can be said that there was little improvement in the level of health status of the U.S. people as they experienced lower infant mortality rate in 2006 than in 2000. Looking at these two figures, it can be inferred that although health situation in terms of infant mortality rate has improved from 2000 to 2006, the period under consideration did not experience a continuous improvement in the health status of U.S. people with increasing international trade. On the basis of these two figures it can be predicted that the level of international trade and infant mortality rate were not close related in U.S. for the period under consideration. To have more accurate picture, correlation coefficient has also been calculated. Table 1 presents the value of the correlation coefficient between international trade and infant mortality rate. Correlations TRADE IMR TRADE Pearson Correlation 1.000 -.359 Sig. (2-tailed) . .429 N 7 7 IMR Pearson Correlation -.359 1.000 Sig. (2-tailed) .429 . N 7 7 Table 1 shows that the correlation coefficient (-.359) between the two variables under consideration is negative. It implies that increase in international trade in U.S. was associated with decrease in infant mortality rate. But the important thing to be mentioned here is that the correlation coefficient is not statistically significant. This simply implies that international trade was not strongly associated with infant mortality rate in U.S. throughout the period under consideration. On the basis of the above findings, it would not be incorrect to say the increase in international trade in U.S. through its increasing participation in the process of globalization has not been able to produce significant effect on the health status of the people living there. Conclusion The insignificant relationship between international trade and infant mortality rate in U.S. points toward two different things. First, it could be that increasing international trade has not been able to improve its health status significantly. This can be a quite plausible explanation of the finding as very often globalization is blamed of increasing income inequality which results in increasing poverty and fails to increase health expenditures of the entire masses. Second possible reason behind such relationship could be that the most of the positive impacts on overall health status have been balanced out by the negative outcomes. This study, however, has certain drawbacks. First, it considers a very small period. Second, it only focuses on one particular manifestation of globalization and one particular indicator of health status. If all other the manifestations of globalization and other indicators of health had been included, results could have been different. Hence there lies wide scope of future research in this area. Reference: 1. Globalization and Health. 2009. Retrieved on 16th July, 2009 from http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story044/en/index.html. 2. National Centre for Health Statistics. Recent Trends in Infant Mortality in the United States. 2008. Retrieved on 16th July, 2009 from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.htm . 3. US Census Bureau. Foreign Trade Statistics. 2009. Retrieved on 16th July, 2009 from http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/index.html. 4. Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2002. 5. Vietor, Richard H.K. Globalization and Growth: Case Studies in National Economic Strategies. 2nd edition. Mason, Ohio: South-Western. 2005. 6. Wolf, Martin. Why Globalization Works. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. 7. Hertz, Noreena. The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy. London: William Heinemann. 2001. 8. Lee, Kelley. Globalisation: what is it and how does it affect health? 2004. Retrieved on 16th July, 2009 from http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/180_04_160204/lee10732_fm.html. 9. Kazmier, Leonard J., Fulks, Daniel L. and Staton, Michael K. Business statistics: based on Schaum's outline of theory and problems of business statistics. McGraw-Hill Professional. 2003. 10. Downing, Douglas., and Clark, Jeff. Business Statistics. Barron's Educational Series. 2003. 11. Daniel, Wayne W. and Terrell, James C. Business statistics: basic concepts and methodology. Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Read More