Poverty and Life Expectancy: The Jamaica Paradox

Poverty and Life Expectancy is a multidisciplinary study that reconstructs Jamaica’s rise from low to high life expectancy and explains how that was achieved. Jamaica is one of the small number of countries that has attained a life expectancy nearly matching that in the rich lands, such as the US, despite having a much lower level of per capita income. Why this is so is the Jamaica paradox. This book provides an answer, surveying possible explanations at the outset of Jamaica’s rapid gains in life expectancy, in the 1920s, and since. Jamaica’s approach to reducing mortality emphasized that school children and their parents master lessons about how to manage disease hazards, and led to a successful collaboration between public health authorities and the people.