IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/eaeuec/v57y2019i6p484-502.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Comparing Cardinal and Ordinal Approaches to Measuring Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health

Author

Listed:
  • Matyna Kobus
  • Leszek Morawski

Abstract

In the last decade, a literature has evolved showing that standard measures of inequality or probit regression are not well-suited for ordinal data such as self-reported health status. Conclusions may be easily reversed via different scaling of the ordinal indicator. This problem also concerns the measurement of socioeconomic inequalities by the concentration index (CI). Using the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we compare the performance of CI against the non-parametric method introduced by Duclos and Echevin (DE) to evaluate joint health-income distributions. We find that Poland is the worst country according to all three methods of computing CI, but it is the best country according to DE dominance curves. This indicates that when applied to ordinal health indicators, the CI approach relies on quite selective information about health-income distribution and should be treated with caution.

Suggested Citation

  • Matyna Kobus & Leszek Morawski, 2019. "Comparing Cardinal and Ordinal Approaches to Measuring Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(6), pages 484-502, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:eaeuec:v:57:y:2019:i:6:p:484-502
    DOI: 10.1080/00128775.2019.1662729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00128775.2019.1662729
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00128775.2019.1662729?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    More about this item

    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:mes:eaeuec:v:57:y:2019:i:6:p:484-502. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MEEE20 .

    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.