Global Health and Economic Development

The Pfizer Journal': Global Health and Economic Development
Global Health and Economic Develoment
The road between health and income runs both ways: the health of a group of people can forecast future growth in income.
The problem with poverty is it takes up all your time. Willem de Kooning (1904-1997). [1]
Toward the end of a long life, the painter Willem de Kooning recalled the ingenuity he had needed to subsist hand-to-mouth on wages as an immigrant day laborer in Depression-era New York. In time, de Kooning found his escape out of the deadening routine of mundane survival tasks thanks to ambition, unrelenting hard work, and the inborn talent that kept him in the front rank of 20th-century artists even after Alzheimer’s disease pillaged his memory.
Throughout his struggle de Kooning was buoyed by unusual advantages. After all, he had left one industrialized country for another. He was literate. He had a sturdy constitution that allowed him vigorous physical health well into his tenth decade. And he was reasonably certain that if he could only win his initial struggle with poverty, the artistic and monetary rewards could exceed his dreams.
Considered against the background of today’s developing world, de Kooning’s poverty was a matter of degree. Work as a housepainter earned him enough to buy food, clothing, and a few luxuries, and keep a roof over his head. Nevertheless, it was his perception as an artist that let him convey in so few words the grinding frustration of being in want: “It takes up all your time.”