The health transition: the cultural inflation of morbidity during the decline of mortality

Abstract

It has become commonplace to observe that as mortality falls, morbidity levels rise. The question is why? The explanation offered here stresses the multidimensional nature of morbidity, and the important role that diverse cultural forces have on the patterns of behaviour which underlie reporting behaviour during modernization. These forces involve rising health expectations on the part of ordinary people, including their ability to perceive illness and their willingness to seek professional help, and institutional pressures on medical professionals which reward them for discovering and treating an ever-growing set of non-fatal diseases. Since non-Western developing countries are training physicians to practice scientific medicine, are educating their citizens to think about disease along modern lines, and measure morbidity as developed countries do, there is every reason to suppose that as mortality falls in these countries, morbidity will rise, just as it has done in the developed world.