How risk scores encode financial logics in health

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7514262
AutoresRachel Rowe (0000-0003-2994-3240, autor correspondente)
Ano2026
Volume55
Fascículo1
Páginas144-165
Data de publicação2026-01-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEconomy and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03085147.2025.2595828
OpenAlexW7130650941
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas45

With the proliferation of digital data about everyday life, data analytics and digital health companies are developing new health and social risk scores. In this paper, I bring social studies of finance into dialogue with sociological literature on data, algorithms and AI to examine how financial logics feature within shifting measurement and classification conventions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and document analysis, the findings reveal how health and social risk scores are used to compete, speculate and diversify investor exposure to risk. Taken together, these findings illuminate the technological dimensions of financialization from within healthcare and public health. Once a lever for disease prevention, ‘data-driven’ calculations of population health risk are playing an expanding role within strategies that prioritize profitability over health.

Disease · Ethnography · Financialization · Hacker · Health care · Interpretability · Population · Profitability index · Public health · Agricultural risk and resilience · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis