IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v10y2001i4p357-361.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of income inequality on individual and societal health: absolute income, relative income and statistical artefacts

Author

Listed:
  • John Wildman

Abstract

The relative income hypothesis, that relative income has a direct effect on individual health, has become an important part of the literature on health inequalities. This paper presents a four‐quadrant diagram, which shows the effect of income, relative income and aggregation bias on individual and societal health. The model predicts that increased income inequality reduces average health regardless of whether relative income affects individual health. If relative income does have a direct effect then societal health will decrease further. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • John Wildman, 2001. "The impact of income inequality on individual and societal health: absolute income, relative income and statistical artefacts," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 357-361, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:10:y:2001:i:4:p:357-361
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.613
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.613
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hec.613?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ettner, Susan L., 1996. "New evidence on the relationship between income and health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 67-85, February.
    2. Robert J. Waldmann, 1992. "Income Distribution and Infant Mortality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(4), pages 1283-1302.
    3. Smith, James P, 1998. "Socioeconomic Status and Health," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 192-196, May.
    4. Gravelle, Hugh & Wildman, John & Sutton, Matthew, 2002. "Income, income inequality and health: what can we learn from aggregate data?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 577-589, February.
    5. Paul Contoyannis & Martin Forster, 1999. "‘Our healthier nation’?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(4), pages 289-296, June.
    6. Culyer, A. J. & Wagstaff, Adam, 1993. "Equity and equality in health and health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 431-457, December.
    7. John D. Hey & Peter J. Lambert, 1980. "Relative Deprivation and the Gini Coefficient: Comment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(3), pages 567-573.
    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. David Cantarero & Marta Pascual & Jose Maria Sarabia, 2004. "Can income inequality contribute to understand inequalities in health? An empirical approach based on the European Community Household Panel," ERSA conference papers ersa04p230, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Johanna Muckenhuber & Nathalie Burkert & Franziska Großschädl & Wolfgang Freidl, 2014. "Income Inequality as a Moderator of the Relationship between Psychological Job Demands and Sickness Absence, in Particular in Men: An International Comparison of 23 Countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-6, February.
    3. K. Lawler & Ali Al-Sayegh Farah, 2019. "Potential Tax Reforms аnd Kuwait Economic Growth," Вестник Киевского национального университета имени Тараса Шевченко. Экономика., Socionet;Киевский национальный университет имени Тараса Шевченко, vol. 1(202), pages 42-48.
    4. John Wildman & Hugh Gravelle & Matthew Sutton, 2003. "Health and income inequality: attempting to avoid the aggregation problem," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(9), pages 999-1004.
    5. Yongzheng Liu & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2015. "Growth–Inequality Tradeoff in the Design of Tax Structure: Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 323-345, May.
    6. Sun, Ping & Unger, Jennifer B. & Palmer, Paula & Ma, Huiyan & Xie, Bin & Sussman, Steve & Johnson, C. Anderson, 2012. "Relative income inequality and selected health outcomes in urban Chinese youth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 84-91.
    7. Wildman, John, 2003. "Modelling health, income and income inequality: the impact of income inequality on health and health inequality," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 521-538, July.
    8. Frijters, Paul & Haisken-DeNew, John P. & Shields, Michael A., 2005. "The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 997-1017, September.
    9. Jennifer Franz & Felix R. FitzRoy, 2005. "Child mortaility, poverty and environment in developing countries," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 200518, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    10. Semyonov, Moshe & Lewin-Epstein, Noah & Maskileyson, Dina, 2013. "Where wealth matters more for health: The wealth–health gradient in 16 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 10-17.
    11. Paul Frijters & John P. Haisken-DeNew & Michael Shields, 2003. "Estimating The Causal Effect of Income on Health: Evidence from Post Reunification East Germany," CEPR Discussion Papers 465, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    12. Eva Deuchert & Sofie Cabus & Darjusch Tafreschi, 2014. "A Short Note On Economic Development And Socioeconomic Inequality In Female Body Weight," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(7), pages 861-869, July.
    13. Wildman, John, 2003. "Income related inequalities in mental health in Great Britain: analysing the causes of health inequality over time," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 295-312, March.
    14. Ọláyínká Oyèkọ́lá, 2023. "Democracy Does Improve Health," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 105-132, February.

    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. Wildman, John, 2003. "Modelling health, income and income inequality: the impact of income inequality on health and health inequality," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 521-538, July.
    2. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Tom Van Ourti, 2013. "Health and Inequality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-170/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Loree, Jacob, 2015. "State Level Income Inequality and Individual Self-Reported Health Status: Evidence from the United States," MPRA Paper 72638, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Hugh Gravelle & Matt Sutton, 2009. "Income, relative income, and self‐reported health in Britain 1979–2000," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(2), pages 125-145, February.
    5. Ken Judge & Iain Paterson, 2001. "Poverty, Income Inequality and Health," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/29, New Zealand Treasury.
    6. Marta Pascual & David Cantarero & Jose Maria Sarabia, 2004. "Trends in income inequality in the European Union: implications for health inequalities," ERSA conference papers ersa04p304, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Jones, Andrew M. & Wildman, John, 2008. "Health, income and relative deprivation: Evidence from the BHPS," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 308-324, March.
    8. Guillem López-Casasnovas & Berta Rivera, 2002. "Las políticas de equidad en salud y las relaciones entre renta y salud," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 161(2), pages 99-126, June.
    9. David Cantarero & Marta Pascual & Jose Maria Sarabia, 2004. "Can income inequality contribute to understand inequalities in health? An empirical approach based on the European Community Household Panel," ERSA conference papers ersa04p230, European Regional Science Association.
    10. Thomas Mayrhofer & Hendrik Schmitz, 2014. "Testing the relationship between income inequality and life expectancy: a simple correction for the aggregation effect when using aggregated data," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 841-856, July.
    11. Lucy Bechtel & Grace Lordan & D. S. Prasada Rao, 2012. "Income Inequality And Mental Health—Empirical Evidence From Australia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(S1), pages 4-17, June.
    12. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Elena Cottini & Herrarte, A. (Ainhoa), 2012. "GINI DP 39: Socioeconomic Gradient in Health: How Important is Material Deprivation?," GINI Discussion Papers 39, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    13. Chong Hui Ling & Khalid Ahmed & Rusnah Muhamad & Muhammad Shahbaz & Nanthakumar Loganathan, 2017. "Testing the Social Cost of Rapid Economic Development in Malaysia: The Effect of Trade on Life Expectancy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 1005-1023, February.
    14. Peter Adams & Michael D. Hurd & Daniel L. McFadden & Angela Merrill & Tiago Ribeiro, 2004. "Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise? Tests for Direct Causal Paths between Health and Socioeconomic Status," NBER Chapters, in: Perspectives on the Economics of Aging, pages 415-526, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Angus Deaton, 2003. "Health, Inequality, and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 113-158, March.
    16. Borowiecki, Karol Jan & Kavetsos, Georgios, 2015. "In fatal pursuit of immortal fame: Peer competition and early mortality of music composers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 30-42.
    17. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2002. "Income Inequality and Health Status in the United States: Evidence from the Current Population Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(3), pages 510-539.
    18. Meer, Jonathan & Miller, Douglas L. & Rosen, Harvey S., 2003. "Exploring the health-wealth nexus," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 713-730, September.
    19. Wildman, John, 2003. "Income related inequalities in mental health in Great Britain: analysing the causes of health inequality over time," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 295-312, March.
    20. Grace Lordan & Eliana Jimenez Soto & Richard P. C. Brown & Ignacio Correa‐Valez, 2012. "Socioeconomic status and health outcomes in a developing country," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 178-186, February.

    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:wly:hlthec:v:10:y:2001:i:4:p:357-361. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    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.