IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ant/wpaper/2010015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all? Revisiting the extended concentration index

Author

Listed:
  • ERREYGERS, Guido
  • CLARKE, Philip
  • VAN OURTI, Tom

Abstract

This paper explores three alternative indices for measuring health inequalities in a way that takes into account attitudes towards inequality. Firstly, we revisit the extended concentration index which has been proposed to generalise the value judgements implicit in the standard concentration index. We then examine two alternative measures which have desirable mirror properties. One of these indices applies symmetric weights which is a property of the standard concentration index. We also examine the bias that arises when all three measures are applied to small samples. We propose a correction for this small sample bias and use Monte Carlo simulations to check whether it works. We empirically compare the different indices for under-five mortality rates in developing countries.

Suggested Citation

  • ERREYGERS, Guido & CLARKE, Philip & VAN OURTI, Tom, 2010. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all? Revisiting the extended concentration index," Working Papers 2010015, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ant:wpaper:2010015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman/irua/74d4da/b178eaec.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tom Van Ourti & Philip Clarke, 2011. "A Simple Correction to Remove the Bias of the Gini Coefficient due to Grouping," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 982-994, August.
    2. Ellen van de Poel & Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2007. "Are Urban Children really healthier?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-035/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer & Adam Wagstaff & Magnus Lindelow, 2008. "Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data : A Guide to Techniques and Their Implementation," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6896.
    4. Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jones, Andrew M. & López-Nicolás, Angel & Rice, Nigel, 2006. "Socioeconomic inequalities in health: A comparative longitudinal analysis using the European Community Household Panel," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(5), pages 1246-1261, September.
    5. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1989. "Improving the accuracy of estimates of Gini coefficients," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 43-47, September.
    6. Van de Poel, Ellen & O'Donnell, Owen & Van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2007. "Are urban children really healthier? Evidence from 47 developing countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(10), pages 1986-2003, November.
    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. Lambert, Peter & Zheng, Buhong, 2011. "On the consistent measurement of attainment and shortfall inequality," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 214-219, January.
    2. Zhuo Chen & Kakoli Roy & Carol A. Gotway Crawford, 2012. "Evaluation Of Variance Estimators For The Concentration And Health Achievement Indices: A Monte Carlo Simulation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(11), pages 1375-1381, November.

    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. Erreygers, Guido & Clarke, Philip & Van Ourti, Tom, 2012. "“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?”—Distributional sensitivity in the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 257-270.
    2. Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Masseria, Cristina, 2013. "Measuring Income-Related Inequalities in Health in Multi-Country Analysis/Midiendo las desigualdades en salud relacionadas con la renta entre países," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 31, pages 455-476, Septiembr.
    3. Mesbah Fathy Sharaf & Ahmed Shoukry Rashad, 2016. "Regional inequalities in child malnutrition in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen: a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. Aizawa, Toshiaki, 2019. "Ex-ante Inequality of Opportunity in Child Malnutrition: New Evidence from Ten Developing Countries in Asia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 144-161.
    5. Fernald, Lia C.H. & Hidrobo, Melissa, 2011. "Effect of Ecuador's cash transfer program (Bono de Desarrollo Humano) on child development in infants and toddlers: A randomized effectiveness trial," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(9), pages 1437-1446, May.
    6. Hai Zhong, 2010. "On decomposing the inequality and inequity change in health care utilization: change in means, or change in the distributions?," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 369-386, December.
    7. Makate, Marshall & Makate, Clifton, 2016. "The Evolution of Socioeconomic-Related Inequalities in Maternal Healthcare Utilization: Evidence from Zimbabwe, 1994-2011," MPRA Paper 83897, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 12 Jan 2018.
    8. Sylvia Szabo & Sabu Padmadas & Jane Falkingham, 2018. "Is Rapid Urbanisation Exacerbating Wealth-Related Urban Inequalities in Child Nutritional Status? Evidence from Least Developed Countries," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(4), pages 630-651, September.
    9. Maurice Mutisya & Moses W. Ngware & Caroline W. Kabiru & Ngianga-bakwin Kandala, 2016. "The effect of education on household food security in two informal urban settlements in Kenya: a longitudinal analysis," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 8(4), pages 743-756, August.
    10. 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.
    11. Silvia De Nicol`o & Maria Rosaria Ferrante & Silvia Pacei, 2021. "Mind the Income Gap: Bias Correction of Inequality Estimators in Small-Sized Samples," Papers 2107.08950, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    12. Pérez-Mesa, David & Marrero, Gustavo A. & Darias-Curvo, Sara, 2021. "Child health inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa," MPRA Paper 108801, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Liu, Hong & Fang, Hai & Zhao, Zhong, 2013. "Urban–rural disparities of child health and nutritional status in China from 1989 to 2006," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 294-309.
    14. Marta Jankowska & Magdalena Benza & John Weeks, 2013. "Estimating spatial inequalities of urban child mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(2), pages 33-62.
    15. Tatjana Miljkovic & Ying-Ju Chen, 2021. "A new computational approach for estimation of the Gini index based on grouped data," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 2289-2311, September.
    16. Amlan Majumder & Takayoshi Kusago, 2021. "A consistency check of the World Income Inequality Database in favour of common readers," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-17, July.
    17. Pakrashi, Debayan & Saha, Sarani, 2020. "Intergenerational consequences of maternal domestic violence: Effect on nutritional status of children," GLO Discussion Paper Series 551, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    18. Guido Erreygers & Philip Clarke & Qiong Zheng, 2017. "On the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health between countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(2), pages 175-193, June.
    19. Sveréus, Sofia & Kjellsson, Gustav & Rehnberg, Clas, 2018. "Socioeconomic distribution of GP visits following patient choice reform and differences in reimbursement models: Evidence from Sweden," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(9), pages 949-956.
    20. Payal Hathi & Sabrina Haque & Lovey Pant & Diane Coffey & Dean Spears, 2017. "Place and Child Health: The Interaction of Population Density and Sanitation in Developing Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(1), pages 337-360, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality; Extended concentration index; Inequality aversion; Small-sample bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I19 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Other
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ant:wpaper:2010015. 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: Joeri Nys (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ftufsbe.html .

    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.