Primary Submission Category: Structural factors
Neoliberal deregulation: what is it and why it matters for US population health inequities
Authors: Maren Spolum,
Presenting Author: Maren Spolum*
A growing body of literature investigating the commercial determinants of health has documented the public health harms perpetrated by large corporate actors across the U.S. The power that these large corporate actors are able to wield results from a counterrevolution against market consolidation waged by neoliberal academics beginning in the mid-1940s. This presentation will share a historical analysis of how the current landscape of consolidated market power across almost every sector of U.S. society is the result, in part, of their actions. Additionally, the presentation will then trace how dominant firms’ economic power allows them to also concentrate political power, which has been wielded to further undermine the governmental bodies charged with regulating the industry practices, specifically those protecting safety, health and the environment. I will then share a set of proposed pathways by which neoliberal deregulation has eroded democratic governance by supporting the concentration of private power, and the ways in which American consumers, communities and ultimately their health are harmed within this environment of excessive concentration & deregulation.