Abstract
Health demography focuses on the implications of population characteristics for health and healthcare. However, as central as these concepts are to our discussion, they are surprisingly difficult to define, despite the obsession of American society with both of these concepts. What constitutes health – and its counterparts sickness, and disease – depends on one’s frame of reference. Although the term health clearly refers to a condition of human individuals and populations, there is no consensus on a definition. Medical sociologists studying the meanings of these terms have had to settle for several definitions, each linked to a different explanatory model. The various definitions and the perspectives they represent will be discussed later in this chapter.
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Pol, L.G., Thomas, R.K. (2013). Health and Healthcare: An Introduction. In: The Demography of Health and Healthcare. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8903-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8903-8_2
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