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Early riser, late bloomer: Contextualizing Turkish health achievements in the last 50 years vis-à-vis China and the global picture of development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2018

İlhan Can Özen
İlhan Can Özen*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey; iozen@metu.edu.tr.
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Abstract

Where does Turkey’s performance in the health dimension of the Preston Curve stand with regard to comparable countries on the development ladder? When one observes the chronological progression of health and wealth values embedded in the Preston Curve for developing countries, one sees a near monotonic increase across the board, with only a very small number of downwardly mobile countries. In the face of this near-universal increase in health and wealth values, it is necessary to adopt a more comparative perspective in order to situate the Turkish state’s choices and performance within the general story playing out for developing countries in the second half of the 20th century. Utilizing just such a comparative framework, this article uses China’s experience between 1960 and 2010 as an alternative through which to understand Turkey’s development experience.

Keywords

Cross-country comparisonsSocioeconomic variablesPublic healthHealth economicsHealth and economic developmentHealth and inequality
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 58 , May 2018 , pp. 35 - 92
Copyright
© New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2018 

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