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The Global Joint Distribution of Income and Health

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Author Info
Thanasis Stengos () (University of Guelph, Canada and The Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, Italy)
Ximing Wu () (Texas A&M University, USA)
Andreas Savvides () (Cyprus University, Cyprus and Oklahoma State University, USA)

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Abstract

We investigate the evolution of global welfare in two dimensions: income per capita and life expectancy. First, we estimate the marginal distributions of income and life expectancy separately. More importantly, in contrast to previous univariate approaches, we consider income and life expectancy jointly and estimate their bivariate global distribution for 137 countries during 1970 - 2000. We reach several conclusions: the global joint distribution has evolved from a bimodal into a unimodal one, the evolution of the health distribution has preceded that of income, global inequality and poverty has decreased over time and the evolution of the global distribution has been welfare improving. Our decomposition of overall welfare indicates that global inequality would be underestimated if within-country inequality is not taken into account. Moreover, global inequality and poverty would be substantially underestimated if the dependence between the income and health distributions is ignored.

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Paper provided by Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis in its series Working Paper Series with number 25-08.

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Date of creation: Jan 2008
Date of revision: Jan 2008
Handle: RePEc:rim:rimwps:25-08

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Related research
Keywords: Income; Health; Global Distribution; Inequality; Poverty;

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  2. Angus Deaton, 2006. "Global patterns of income and health: facts, interpretations, and policies," Working Papers 231, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Health and Wellbeing.. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Racine, Jeff & Stengos, Thanasis, 2007. "Growth and convergence: A profile of distribution dynamics and mobility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 136(2), pages 483-508, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Rodrigo R. Soares, 2005. "Mortality Reductions, Educational Attainment, and Fertility Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 580-601, June. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Quah, Danny, 1996. "Twin Peaks: Growth and Convergence in Models of Distribution Dynamics," CEPR Discussion Papers 1355, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2004. "How Have the World's Poorest Fared Since the Early 1980s?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3341, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  8. David M. Cutler & Angus S. Deaton & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2006. "The Determinants of Mortality," NBER Working Papers 11963, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. François Bourguignon & Christian Morrisson, 2001. "Inequality among World Citizens : 1820-1992," DELTA Working Papers 2001-18, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
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  13. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-66, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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