IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jhecon/v21y2002i4p627-641.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality aversion, health inequalities and health achievement

Author

Listed:
  • Wagstaff, Adam

Abstract

The author addresses two issues. First, how can health inequalities be measured so as to take into account policymakers'attitudes toward inequality? The Gini coefficient and the related concentration index embody one particular set of value judgments. Generalizing these indexes allows alternative sets of value judgments to be reflected. And second, how can information on health inequality be combined with information on the mean of the relevant distribution to obtain an overall measure of health"achievement?"Applying the approach developed by Wagstaff shows how much worse some countries perform when the focus switches from average health to an achievement index that also reflects the health gap between the poor and the better-off.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Wagstaff, Adam, 2002. "Inequality aversion, health inequalities and health achievement," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 627-641, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:21:y:2002:i:4:p:627-641
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-6296(02)00006-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wagstaff, Adam & Paci, Pierella & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1991. "On the measurement of inequalities in health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 545-557, January.
    2. Humphries, Karin H. & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2000. "Income-related health inequality in Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 663-671, March.
    3. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1983. "On an Extension of the Gini Inequality Index," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 24(3), pages 617-628, October.
    4. Wagstaff, Adam, 1991. "QALYs and the equity-efficiency trade-off," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 21-41, May.
    5. Deon Filmer & Lant Pritchett, 1999. "The Effect of Household Wealth on Educational Attainment: Evidence from 35 Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 25(1), pages 85-120, March.
    6. Mackenbach, Johan P. & Kunst, Anton E., 1997. "Measuring the magnitude of socio-economic inequalities in health: An overview of available measures illustrated with two examples from Europe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 757-771, March.
    7. Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Watanabe, Naoko, 2003. "On decomposing the causes of health sector inequalities with an application to malnutrition inequalities in Vietnam," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 207-223, January.
    8. Jenkins, Stephen, 1988. "Calculating Income Distribution Indices From Micro-Data," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 41(1), pages 139-142, March.
    9. Jenkins, Stephen, 1988. "Calculating Income Distribution Indices from Micro-Data," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 41(1), pages 139-42, March.
    10. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    11. Le Grand, Julian, 1987. "Inequalities in health : Some international comparisons," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 182-191.
    12. Wagstaff, Adam & Watanabe, Naoko, 2000. "Socioeconomic inequalities in child malnutrition in the developing world," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2434, The World Bank.
    13. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1984. "A note on the calculation and interpretation of the Gini index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 15(3-4), pages 363-368.
    14. Adam Wagstaff & Eddy Van Doorslaer, 1994. "Measuring inequalities in health in the presence of multiple‐category morbidity indicators," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 3(4), pages 281-291, July.
    15. Kakwani, Nanak & Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1997. "Socioeconomic inequalities in health: Measurement, computation, and statistical inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 87-103, March.
    16. Gerdtham, U. -G. & Johannesson, M. & Lundberg, L. & Isacson, D., 1999. "A note on validating Wagstaff and van Doorslaer's health measure in the analysis of inequalities in health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 117-124, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. H. Eme Ichoku & William Fonta & Michael Thiede, 2011. "Socioeconomic gradients in self-rated health: a developing country case study of Enugu State, Nigeria," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 179-202, August.
    2. Wagstaff, Adam, 2002. "Inequalities in health in developing countries - swimming against the tide?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2795, The World Bank.
    3. Gerdtham, Ulf-G & Sundberg, Gun, 1996. "Measuring Income-Related Health Inequalities in Sweden," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 120, Stockholm School of Economics.
    4. Xu, Ke Tom, 2006. "State-level variations in income-related inequality in health and health achievement in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 457-464, July.
    5. Bleichrodt, Han & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2006. "A welfare economics foundation for health inequality measurement," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 945-957, September.
    6. I. Josa & A. Aguado, 2020. "Measuring Unidimensional Inequality: Practical Framework for the Choice of an Appropriate Measure," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 541-570, June.
    7. Nesson, Erik T. & Robinson, Joshua J., 2019. "On the measurement of health and its effect on the measurement of health inequality," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 207-221.
    8. Lindelow, Magnus, 2004. "Sometimes more equal than others : how health inequalities depend on the choice of welfare indicator," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3329, The World Bank.
    9. M. Dolores Montoya Diaz, 2002. "Socio‐economic health inequalities in Brazil: gender and age effects," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(2), pages 141-154, March.
    10. Steven Prus, 2007. "Age, SES, and Health: A Population Level Analysis of Health Inequalities over the Life Course," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 181, McMaster University.
    11. Philip Clarke & Tom Van Ourti, 2009. "Correcting the Bias in the Concentration Index when Income is Grouped," CEPR Discussion Papers 599, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    12. Mishra, Udaya S., 2016. "Measuring progress towards MDGs in child health: Should base level sensitivity and inequity matter?," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 70-81.
    13. Magnus Lindelow, 2006. "Sometimes more equal than others: how health inequalities depend on the choice of welfare indicator," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(3), pages 263-279, March.
    14. Costa-Font, Joan & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina, 2012. "Measuring inequalities in health: What do we know? What do we need to know?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 195-206.
    15. Rohde, Kirsten I.M. & Van Ourti, Tom & Soebhag, Amar, 2023. "Reducing socioeconomic health inequalities? A questionnaire study of majorization and invariance conditions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    16. Wagstaf, Adam & Paci, Pierella & Joshi, Heather, 2001. "Causes of inequality in health : who are you? where do you live? or who your parents were?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2713, The World Bank.
    17. Pradhan, Jalandhar & Arokiasamy, Perianayagam, 2010. "Socio-economic inequalities in child survival in India: A decomposition analysis," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(2-3), pages 114-120, December.
    18. Clarke, Philip & Van Ourti, Tom, 2010. "Calculating the concentration index when income is grouped," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 151-157, January.
    19. William Joe & U. S. Mishra & K. Navaneetham, 2009. "Inequalities in Childhood Malnutrition in India: Some Evidence on Group Disparities," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 417-439.
    20. Kenya Valeria M. S. Noronha & M™nica Viegas Andrade, 2002. "Desigualdades sociais em saúde: evidências empíricas sobre o caso brasileiro," Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG td171, Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:21:y:2002:i:4:p:627-641. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505560 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.