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Introduction: Human health and wellbeing may depend on economic growth, the implication being that policymakers need to choose between population health and the health of ecosystems. Over two decades of low economic growth, Japan's life expectancy grew. Here we assess the temporal changes of subjective health and health inequality during the long-term low economic growth period. Methods: Eight triennial cross-sectional nationally representative surveys in Japan over the period of economic stagnation from 1992 to 2013 were used (n = 625,262). Health is defined positively as wellbeing, and negatively as poor health, based on self-rated health. We used Slope and Relative Indices of Inequality to model inequalities in self-rated health based on household income. Temporal changes in health and health inequalities over time were examined separately for children/adolescents, working-age adults, young-old and old-old.Results: At the end of the period of economic stagnation (2013), compared to the beginning (1992), the overall prevalence of wellbeing declined slightly in all age groups. However, poor health was stable or declined in the young-old and old-old, respectively, and increased only in working-age adults (Prevalence ratio: 1.14, 95% CI 1.08, 1.20, <0.001). Over time, inequality in wellbeing and poor self-rated health were observed in adults but less consistently for children, but the inequalities did not widen in any age group between the start and end of the stagnation period.Conclusions: Although this study was a case study of one country, Japan, and inference to other countries cannot be made with certainty, the findings provide evidence that low economic growth over two decades did not inevitably translate to unfavourable population health. Japanese health inequalities according to income were stable during the study period. Therefore, this study highlighted the possibility that for high-income countries, low economic growth may be compatible with good popula

Background: Some women have a perceived negative experience of childbirth due to various reasonse.g., obstetric complications or the feeling of loss of control. We do not know enough about the effects of a perceived negative experience of a childbirth on a woman's subsequent pregnancies. The aim of this study was to investigate whether a previously perceived negative childbirth experience affects a woman's physical and mental well-being in a later pregnancy. Methods: A prospective cohort study in Danish general practice, based on information about women's childbirth experiences from the Pregnancy Health Record filled in by the general practitioner (GP) and data from an electronic questionnaire completed by the women. Results: A total of 1288 women were included in the analysis. Women who had given birth before were found to have a significantly higher risk of experiencing nausea, varicose veins and uterine contractions, and a lower risk of pelvic cavity pain in the current pregnancy. Women having given birth before were significantly more likely to assess their physical fitness as poor and to experience poor well-being. Women with a perceived negative experience of childbirth had more sleep problems and a higher prevalence of poor self-rated health than women with unproblematic childbirth experience. Conclusion: This study showed that women with a previously perceived negative experience of childbirth are affected according to their mental health in their subsequent pregnancy (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )