IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v62y2006i9p2327-2335.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health, wealth and fairness based on gender: The support for ethical principles

Author

Listed:
  • Månsdotter, Anna
  • Lindholm, Lars
  • Lundberg, Michael

Abstract

Sex differences in health, and the reality of a gender system, are well-known, but we know little about how this connects to opinions on fairness and desired change. This study aims to explore two principal questions: how to compare the position of women and men within-state and how to choose between-states, where a state is defined as a situation in which individuals have a particular set of resources, rights and duties, and if components in the set are altered, a new state for the same individuals appears. Based on various normative rules (monistic view or separate spheres, equity as choice or ethics of care, equity by attainment or shortfall; variants of welfarism, feminism and conservatism), a survey among Swedish public health workers was carried out. The results demonstrate a major rejection of the idea of compensation between health, power, influence and resources, and of considering past processes when judging fairness as to women and men. Moreover, most respondents believe that a biologically based difference in health is fair and reject health maximization as a guiding principle. The support for gender equality is strong when contrasted with the conservative goal, and subsists when contrasted against the Pareto criterion and trading-off health/income as well. Results that call for additional research and exchange of views include that common notions in research and policy-making are rejected by a majority, and that females and males differ considerably when judging change from a societal perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Månsdotter, Anna & Lindholm, Lars & Lundberg, Michael, 2006. "Health, wealth and fairness based on gender: The support for ethical principles," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(9), pages 2327-2335, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:62:y:2006:i:9:p:2327-2335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(05)00555-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Culyer, A J, 1989. "The Normative Economics of Health Care Finance and Provision," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 5(1), pages 34-58, Spring.
    2. Hurley, Jeremiah, 2000. "An overview of the normative economics of the health sector," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 55-118, Elsevier.
    3. Lars Lindholm & Måns Rosén, 1998. "On the measurement of the nation's equity adjusted health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(7), pages 621-628, November.
    4. Johansson,Per-Olov, 1991. "An Introduction to Modern Welfare Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521356954, September.
    5. Mansdotter, Anna & Lindholm, Lars & Ohman, Ann, 2004. "Women, men and public health--how the choice of normative theory affects resource allocation," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 351-364, September.
    6. Fredrik Andersson & Carl Hampus Lyttkens, 1999. "Preferences for equity in health behind a veil of ignorance," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(5), pages 369-378, August.
    7. Tsuchiya, Aki & Williams, Alan, 2005. "A "fair innings" between the sexes: are men being treated inequitably?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 277-286, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mansdotter, Anna & Lindholm, Lars & Winkvist, Anna, 2007. "Paternity leave in Sweden--Costs, savings and health gains," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 102-115, June.

    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. Mansdotter, Anna & Lindholm, Lars & Ohman, Ann, 2004. "Women, men and public health--how the choice of normative theory affects resource allocation," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 351-364, September.
    2. Fleurbaey, Marc & Schokkaert, Erik, 2009. "Unfair inequalities in health and health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 73-90, January.
    3. Philippe Batifoulier & John Latsis & Jacques Merchiers, 2010. "Les priorités de la prise en charge financière des soins. Une approche par la philosophie du besoin," EconomiX Working Papers 2010-2, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    4. Stolpe, Michael, 2003. "Ressourcen und Ergebnisse der globalen Gesundheitsökonomie: Einführung und Überblick," Kiel Working Papers 1177, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    5. Alessandro Petretto, 2013. "On the Fuzzy Boundaries between Public and Private in Health-Care Organization and Funding Systems," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, issue 1, pages 327-370, January-M.
    6. Paul Dolan & Rebecca Shaw & Aki Tsuchiya & Alan Williams, 2005. "QALY maximisation and people's preferences: a methodological review of the literature," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 197-208, February.
    7. Richard Cookson, 2005. "QALYs and the capability approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(8), pages 817-829, August.
    8. Bleichrodt, Han & Quiggin, John, 2013. "Capabilities as menus: A non-welfarist basis for QALY evaluation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 128-137.
    9. Magnus Lindelow, 2004. "The Utilization of Curative Health Care in Mozambique: Does Income Matter?," Development and Comp Systems 0409057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Attema, Arthur E. & Brouwer, Werner B.F. & l’Haridon, Olivier & Pinto, Jose Luis, 2015. "Estimating sign-dependent societal preferences for quality of life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 229-243.
    11. Anna Månsdotter & Björn Ekman & Kaspar Walter Meili & Inna Feldman & Lars Hagberg & Anna-Karin Hurtig & Lars Lindholm, 2020. "Towards capability-adjusted life years in public health and social welfare: Results from a Swedish survey on ranking capabilities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-15, December.
    12. Aki Tsuchiya, 2012. "Distributional Judgements in the Context of Economic Evaluation," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 38, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Lofroth, Emil & Lindholm, Lars & Wilhelmsen, Lars & Rosen, Mans, 2006. "Optimising health care within given budgets: Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in different regions of Sweden," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 214-229, January.
    14. Brouwer, Werner B.F. & Culyer, Anthony J. & van Exel, N. Job A. & Rutten, Frans F.H., 2008. "Welfarism vs. extra-welfarism," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 325-338, March.
    15. Ignacio Abásolo & Aki Tsuchiya, 2013. "Egalitarianism and Altruism in Health: To What Extent Are They Related?," Working Papers 2013003, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    16. Magnus Lindelow, 2003. "The Utilization of Curative Health Care in Mozambique: Does Income Matter?," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2004-11, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Karl Claxton & Mark Sculpher & Tony Culyer, 2007. "Mark versus Luke? Appropriate Methods for the Evaluation of Public Health Interventions," Working Papers 031cherp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    18. Samuel Shillcutt & Damian Walker & Catherine Goodman & Anne Mills, 2009. "Cost Effectiveness in Low- and Middle-Income Countries," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 27(11), pages 903-917, November.
    19. Richardson, Jeff & McKie, John, 2007. "Economic evaluation of services for a National Health Scheme: The case for a fairness-based framework," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 785-799, July.
    20. Nikolina Dukić Samaržija, 2019. "Determining the Marginal Willingness to Pay for the Cervical Cancer Screening Program in Croatia: A Best-Worst Scaling Approach," Society and Economy, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 41(4), pages 433-447, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender Health Fairness Preferences;

    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:socmed:v:62:y:2006:i:9:p:2327-2335. 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/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    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.