Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

53 The distributive progress of the first two decades of the 21 st century, including public health policies, has its limits due to the persistence of informality in the labor market and the lack of consistent policies oriented to building an effective social state in Latin America that guarantees social protection, the advancement of economic democracy and the upgrading of public education, public health, housing and pensions. In the last three decades governments have focused on poverty alleviation and partially improving income distribution. Reducing wealth concentration has been an absent goal and so has the improvement of the redistributive role of the Latin America State characterized by the lack of progressivity in the tax system and the fragmentation of social spending. An effective pro-equity strategy for the coming years and decades should focus on providing good-quality jobs and decent wages and expanding access to healthcare, credit and knowledge for the population. Additionally, universal income floors for the active and passive population should be guaranteed within the framework of a comprehensive and consistent strategy to reduce structural inequality in the region. References Barker, D. J. P. (1995). Fetal origins of coronary heart disease. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) , 311 (6998), 171. https://doi.org/10.1136/BMJ.311.6998.171. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in thesociology of knowledge . New York City. Anchor Book. Cornia, G. (2015). “Income Inequality in Latin America. Recent Decline and Prospects for itsFurther Reduction”. UNU-WIDER Working paper 2015/20 , 149, 43. Foucault, M. (2004). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 . (M. Senellart, Ed.). New York: Picador. Haring, R. (2021). Handbook of Global Health . (I. Kickbusch, D. Ganten & M. Moeti, Eds.), Handbook of Global Health . Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45009-0. Hertzman, C. (2001). Health and Human Society: Wealthier nations are not always healthier, and efforts to improve health can be swamped by the effects of inequalityand conflict on JSTOR. American Scientist , 89 (6), 538- 545. Kickbusch, I. (2012). Addressing the interface of the political and commercial determinantsof health. Health promotion international , 27 (4), 427-428. https://doi.org/10.1093/HEAPRO/DAS057. Kleinman, A., Das, V. & Lock, M. (1997). Social suffering . (University of California Press, Ed.). Berkeley, CA. Merton, R. K. (1936). “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social