http://www.newswire.ca/releases/May1999/20/c6066.html


Canadian Institute for Advanced Research - For richer or poorer

    TORONTO, May 20 /CNW/ - To improve the overall outcome of Canadian
society for all Canadians, help to boost those who are less well off.
    That is the message Dr. Daniel Keating presents to the All-Programs
Congress of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, meeting in Banff
this week.

    ``Helping the most disadvantaged in society can improve health and
overall coping skills of entire populations'', says Keating, who is Program
Director and the Royal Bank Fellow in CIAR's Program in Human Development.
``This reinterprets the conservative adage, `a rising tide lifts all boats.'''
Conventional interpretation calls for incentives to spur industry and the
investment community. Keating's research indicates that all society benefits
by raising the standing of the disadvantaged, in effect reducing the wealth
gap between the rich and the poor.

    The work of the CIAR's Human Development Program will appear in the
program's forthcoming book, ``Developmental Health and the Wealth of
Nations.'' The work shows that differences among modern societies in the
health, competence and coping skills of their populations relate strongly to
the difference in spending power between the richer half and the poorer half
in a population. The larger the discrepancy between the spending power of the
richer and poorer halves, the worse is the overall outcome for the population
as a whole, measured in terms of health, competence and coping skills.
Moreover, societies that address these differences with effective policies to
support human development show greater levels of health, coping and
competence.

    Keating presents his paper ``Developmental health as the wealth of
nations'' at CIAR's All-Programs Congress in Banff, Canada, on Saturday, May
22, 1999.

    The CIAR was set up to support multidisciplinary teams of scholars who
are tackling fundamental questions in the biological, physical and social
world. Held for the second time in the CIAR's seventeen-year history, the
Institute's All-Program Congress, May 20 - 23, will hear papers from
researchers whom CIAR President Stefan Dupré describes as being ``on the
cutting-edge of their own discipline.''

    Dr. Daniel P. Keating is Program Director and Royal Bank Fellow in CIAR's
Program in Human Development. He is Chair of the Department of Human
Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto's Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education.

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For further information: Dr. Daniel P. Keating, May 20, after 1:30 pm,
(403) 762-6204, [log in to unmask]; Jeffrey Crelinsten, CIAR,
(416) 481-7070, [log in to unmask]; See web site for additional story
leads, www.ciar.ca

                © 1999 Canada NewsWire, all rights reserved



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