ABSTRACT
Research in two recently developed ‘hybrid disciplines’ (Kapp 1961), socioeconomic epidemiology and occupational safety and health economics, is of great interest and importance for an evaluation of the substantial performance of public policies and social institutions1. We now dispose of a growing body of empirical evidence attesting the avoidable health impairments of socio-economic inequality, of unemployment and of unsound living and working conditions under the conventional contractual obligations and legal institutions of historical capitalism and under the spreading, more precarious, work arrangements of the last two decades. The degree of penetration of economic de-regulation and privatization policies and their repercussions on population health could thereby become the object of systematic analysis and evidence-based criticism. In fact, the monitoring capacity provided by both these fields of inquiry helps to define the public health aspects of social value and is of fundamental importance for the measurement of the overall social efficiency of different regimes of mixed-market economies.
