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The measurement of health inequalities: does status matter?

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  • Costa-Font, Joan
  • Cowell, Frank

Abstract

Approaches to measuring health inequalities are often problematic because they use methods that are inappropriate for categorical data. In this paper we focus on “pure” or univariate health inequality (rather than income-related or bivariate health inequality) and use a concept of individual status that allows a consistent treatment of such data. We take alternative versions of the status concept and apply methods for treating categorical data to examine self-assessed health inequality for the countries included in the World Health Survey. We also use regression analysis on the apparent determinants of these health inequality estimates. We show that the status concept that is used will affect health-inequality rankings across countries and the way health inequality is related to countries’ median health, income, demographics and governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Costa-Font, Joan & Cowell, Frank, 2022. "The measurement of health inequalities: does status matter?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110484, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:110484
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    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The Measurement of Health Inequalities: Does Status Matter?
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2019-08-22 20:27:34

    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Costa-Font, Joan & Knust, Niklas, 2023. "Does exposure to democracy decrease health inequality?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119444, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Joan Costa-Font & Frank A. Cowell, 2022. "The measurement of health inequalities: does status matter?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(2), pages 299-325, June.
    3. Costa-Font, Joan & Cowell, Frank & Shi, Xuezhu, 2024. "Health inequality and health insurance coverage: The United States and China compared," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    4. Joan Costa-Font & Frank Cowell & Xuezhu Shi & Joan Costa-i-Font, 2023. "Health Inequality and Health Insurance Coverage: The United States and China Compared," CESifo Working Paper Series 10807, CESifo.
    5. Joan Costa‐Font & Frank A. Cowell & Belen Saenz de Miera, 2021. "Measuring pure health inequality and mobility during a health insurance expansion: Evidence from Mexico," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(8), pages 1833-1848, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    health inequality; categorical data; entropy measures; health surveys; upward status; downward status;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies

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