However, much of this can be explained by the emergence of the spread of HIV / AIDS as well as the breakup of the Soviet Union and there diminishing health care quality after the Soviet countries split up and formed many smaller nations. Many countries were also able to make massive improvements in health care in small periods of time. One country in the 1940s was able to improve their average life expectancy by two years after every single year had passed. Much of this vast improvement was due to the eradication of malaria. However, over the course of global development the trend remained fairly constant over time. Another interesting point that was made by the lecturer was that he pointed out that despite the fact that income has not grown equally in many nations, many countries have had...

This is interesting because this would discredit the correlation between income and health that many have believed has existed for years. If nothing else this would indicate that there are other factors that moderate this relationship. Other evidence such as the forty year proportional change in infant mortality and the income developments supports the same conclusion. Rapidly growing economies have had lower rates of infant mortality yet not in a constant proportional change when considered against nations that grew economically but at a slower pace. All this points the case that income is important to a countries level of health but it is not a determinate factor and many other factors come into play as well.