The Wealth of Nations and the First Wave of COVID-19 Diffusion

Nursing workforce plays a significant role in reducing COVID-19 deaths worldwide: A cross-sectional analysis of data from 178 countries

Worldwide, the role of nursing workforce in reducing COVID-19 case fatality ratio (CFR) is analyzed with scatter plots, Pearson's r and nonparametric, partial correlation and multiple linear regression models. The potential confounders, median age, health expenditure, physician density, and urbanization were incorporated for calculating the independent role of nursing workforce in protecting against COVID-19 CFR. The study findings suggested that (1) the nursing workforce inversely and significantly correlates with COVID-19 CFR; (2) this relationship remained independent of the confounding effects of each individual confounder or their combination; (3) Nursing workforce was the only variable identified as a significant contributor for reducing COVID-19 CFR, when it was incorporated into stepwise regression model with health expenditure, median age, physician density, and urbanization for analyzing their individual predicting effects on COVID-19 CFR. A strong message for the health authorities is that, although in shortage, nursing workforce showed their significant role in reducing COVID-19 deaths worldwide. This study highlights that the role of nursing workforce should be incorporated into population health research.

Inequalities in regional excess mortality and life expectancy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe

Using data for 201 regions (NUTS 2) in Europe, we examine the mortality burden of the COVID-19 pandemic and how the mortality inequalities between regions changed between 2020 and 2022. We show that over the three years of the pandemic, not only did the level of excess mortality rate change considerably, but also its geographical distribution. Focusing on life expectancy as a summary measure of mortality conditions, we find that the variance of regional life expectancy increased sharply in 2021 but returned to the pre-pandemic level in 2022. The 2021 increase was due to a much higher-than-average excess mortality in regions with lower pre-pandemic life expectancy. While the life expectancy inequality has returned to its pre-pandemic level in 2022, the observed life expectancy in almost all regions is far below that expected without the pandemic.

Is Economic Growth Good for Population Health? A Critical Review

A large multidisciplinary literature discusses the relationship between economic growth and population health. The idea that economic growth is good for societies has inspired extensive academic debate, but conclusions have been mixed. To help shed light on the subject, this paper focuses on opportunities for consensus in this large literature. Much scholarship finds that the health-growth relationship varies according to (1) which aspect of "health" is under consideration, (2) shape (e.g., positive linear or logarithmic), (3) issues of timing (e.g., growth over the short or long term), (4) a focus on health inequalities as opposed to population averages, and (5) multivariable relationships with additional factors. After reflecting upon these findings, I propose that economic growth promotes health in some respects, for some countries, and in conjunction with other life-supporting priorities, but does not by itself improve population health generally speaking. I then argue there is already wide, interdisciplinary consensus to support this stance. Moreover, policies focusing exclusively on economic growth threaten harm to both population health and growth, which is to say that political dynamics are also implicated. Yet multivariable approaches can help clarify the bigger picture of how growth relates to health. For moving this literature forward, the best opportunities may involve the simultaneous analysis of multiple factors. The recognition of consensus around these issues would be welcome, and timely.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42650-023-00072-y.

European Governments' Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic during the First Wave: Resetting Governance Systems to Cope More Effectively with Future Shocks

The emergence of the current global crisis induced by the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic brings about an urgent need to rethink and reshape recovery strategies adapted to this specific challenging context. Neglecting this reconfiguration could lead to system lockdown, affecting all sectors, both on medium and long term. The coronavirus has penetrated various countries with different degrees of intensity, thus being spatially diversified; even within the same country, with the same lockdown measures, an enormous variety in cases is encountered. Subsequently, even if crises may manifest heterogeneously and the long-term impact of implementing recovery policies cannot be accurately known ex ante by governments, institutions could adapt themselves to changing circumstances and respond promptly and appropriately to emerging shocks only if their functioning framework had been well set up by the outbreak of the crisis. Considering these aspects, the main questions that this paper aims to answer are: How effective have governmental measures in European countries been in combating the COVID-19 crisis?; Could the solutions offered by the European states' governments have an influence on diminishing the intensity of negative effects of a possible more serious return of this health crisis? What more could national authorities and international actors do to control the epidemiological evolution of SARS-CoV-2? Is a generic European Union policy helpful or should there be a case for local policy? Based on these issues, a comprehensive picture of the differences between the East and the West of Europe in terms of some medical, socio-economic, institutional and cultural factors will be outlined, in order to emphasize which of the two groups better-handled the COVID-19 situation in the first wave, covering the lockdown period (March 1, 2020 - June 1, 2020) and the relaxation period (June 1, 2020 - September 1, 2020); at the same time, some policy recommendations on how governments should more effectively manage future similar crises to generate a higher resilience of the systems will be provided.

The world trade network: country centrality and the COVID-19 pandemic

International trade is based on a set of complex relationships between different countries that can be modelled as an extremely dense network of interconnected agents. On the one hand, this network might favour the economic growth of countries, but on the other, it can also favour the diffusion of diseases, such as COVID-19. In this paper, we study whether, and to what extent, the topology of the trade network can explain the rate of COVID-19 diffusion and mortality across countries. We compute the countries' centrality measures and we apply the community detection methodology based on communicability distance. We then use these measures as focal regressors in a negative binomial regression framework. In doing so, we also compare the effects of different measures of centrality. Our results show that the numbers of infections and fatalities are larger in countries with a higher centrality in the global trade network.