Population Reference Bureau Population Bulletin Vol. New and Ancient Threats to World Health Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Factors Social, economic, political, and cultural forces can also have major impacts on the emergence and spread of IPDs.
Political unrest can cause rapid migrations of large numbers of people to new geographic areas.
Social and economic factors can encourage the flow of large numbers of migrants, such as the stream of migrants from Mexico and Central America into the United States. Political refugees often find themselves in crowded temporary living quarters without access to clean water and proper nourishment, inadequate sanitation, limited medical care, and little protection from such disease vectors as rodents and arthropods. While the effect of economic factors on disease is most often manifested in persistent poverty or migration, economic crises can lead to disease, especially when famine is involved. 43 Cultural and religious forces can also exert important positive and negative pressures on the development and spread of infectious and parasitic diseases. In India, religious rituals require Hindus to drink water from the Ganges river, which is highly contaminated.