IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/halshs-00850014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality and bi-polarization in socioeconomic status and health: Ordinal approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Bénédicte Apouey

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Jacques Silber

    (Department of Economics [Israël] - Bar-Ilan University [Israël], CEPS/INSTEAD - Centre d'Etudes de Populations, de Pauvreté et de Politiques Socio-Economiques / International Networks for Studies in Technology, Environment, Alternatives, Development - Centre d'Etudes de Populations, de Pauvreté et de Politiques Socio-Economiques / International Networks for Studies in Technology, Environment, Alternatives, Development)

Abstract

Traditional indices of bi-dimensional inequality and polarization were developed for cardinal variables and cannot be used to quantify dispersion in ordinal measures of socioeconomic status and health. This paper develops two approaches to the measurement of inequality and bi-polarization using only ordinal information. An empirical illustration is given for 24 European Union countries in 2004-2006 and 2011. Results suggest that inequalities and bi-polarization in income and health are especially large in Estonia and Portugal, and that inequalities have significantly increased in recent years in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands, whereas bi-polarization significantly decreased in France, Portugal, and the UK.

Suggested Citation

  • Bénédicte Apouey & Jacques Silber, 2013. "Inequality and bi-polarization in socioeconomic status and health: Ordinal approaches," Working Papers halshs-00850014, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00850014
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00850014v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00850014v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benedicte Apouey, 2007. "Measuring health polarization with self‐assessed health data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(9), pages 875-894, September.
    2. Bénédicte H. Apouey, 2010. "On Measuring And Explaining Socioeconomic Polarization In Health With An Application To French Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(1), pages 141-170, March.
    3. Kobus, Martyna & Miłoś, Piotr, 2012. "Inequality decomposition by population subgroups for ordinal data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 15-21.
    4. van Kippersluis, Hans & Van Ourti, Tom & O'Donnell, Owen & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2009. "Health and income across the life cycle and generations in Europe," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 818-830, July.
    5. Adam Wagstaff & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2004. "Overall versus socioeconomic health inequality: a measurement framework and two empirical illustrations," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(3), pages 297-301, March.
    6. Adi Lazar & Jacques Silber, 2013. "On The Cardinal Measurement Of Health Inequality When Only Ordinal Information Is Available On Individual Health Status," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 106-113, January.
    7. Abul Naga, Ramses H. & Yalcin, Tarik, 2008. "Inequality measurement for ordered response health data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1614-1625, December.
    8. Doorslaer, Eddy van & Jones, Andrew M., 2003. "Inequalities in self-reported health: validation of a new approach to measurement," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 61-87, January.
    9. Eddy van Doorslaer & Xander Koolman, 2004. "Explaining the differences in income‐related health inequalities across European countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(7), pages 609-628, July.
    10. Alain Trannoy & Sandy Tubeuf & Florence Jusot & Marion Devaux, 2010. "Inequality of opportunities in health in France: a first pass," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 921-938, August.
    11. Groot, Wim, 2000. "Adaptation and scale of reference bias in self-assessments of quality of life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 403-420, May.
    12. Joseph Deutsch & Jacques Silber & Gaston Yalonetzky, 2014. "On Bi-Polarization and The Middle Class in Latin America: A Look At the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(S2), pages 332-352, November.
    13. Allison, R. Andrew & Foster, James E., 2004. "Measuring health inequality using qualitative data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 505-524, May.
    14. repec:dau:papers:123456789/268 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Kakwani, Nanak & Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1997. "Socioeconomic inequalities in health: Measurement, computation, and statistical inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 87-103, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. #HEJC papers for September 2013
      by academichealtheconomists in The Academic Health Economists' Blog on 2013-09-01 04:01:38

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bénédicte Apouey & Pierre-Yves Geoffard, 2015. "Le gradient et la transmission intergénérationnelle de la santé pendant l'enfance," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 475(1), pages 113-133.
    2. Martyna Kobus & Radosław Kurek, 2019. "Multidimensional polarization for ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(3), pages 301-317, September.
    3. Kobus, Martyna & Kurek, Radosław, 2023. "Measuring inequality in the joint distribution of socioeconomic status and health," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    4. Frank A Cowell & Martyna Kobus & Radoslaw Kurek, 2017. "Welfare and Inequality Comparisons for Uni- and Multi-dimensional Distributions of Ordinal Data," STICERD - Public Economics Programme Discussion Papers 31, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    5. SILBER, Jacques & XU, Yongsheng, 2016. "The Health Equivalent Adjusted Level (HEAL): Taking an Ordinal Approach to the Measurement of a Society's Health Achievements," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-31, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    6. Maria Livia ŞTEFĂNESCU, 2015. "Analyzing the health status of the population using ordinal data," Computational Methods in Social Sciences (CMSS), "Nicolae Titulescu" University of Bucharest, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 3(1), pages 18-24, June.
    7. Marta Pascual & David Cantarero & Paloma Lanza, 2018. "Health polarization and inequalities across Europe: an empirical approach," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(8), pages 1039-1051, November.
    8. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01155572 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Klein, Ingo & Mangold, Benedikt, 2015. "Cumulative Paired 𝜙-Entropy," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 07/2015, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    10. Valérie Bérenger & Jacques Silber, 2022. "On the Measurement of Happiness and of its Inequality," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 861-902, March.

    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. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00850014 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Bénédicte H. Apouey & Jacques Silber, 2016. "Performance and Inequality in Health: A Comparison of Child and Maternal Health across Asia," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality after the 20th Century: Papers from the Sixth ECINEQ Meeting, volume 24, pages 181-214, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    3. I. Josa & A. Aguado, 2020. "Measuring Unidimensional Inequality: Practical Framework for the Choice of an Appropriate Measure," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 541-570, June.
    4. Maria Livia ŞTEFĂNESCU, 2015. "Analyzing the health status of the population using ordinal data," Computational Methods in Social Sciences (CMSS), "Nicolae Titulescu" University of Bucharest, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 3(1), pages 18-24, June.
    5. Jones, Andrew M. & Rice, Nigel & Robone, Silvana & Dias, Pedro Rosa, 2011. "Inequality and polarisation in health systems' responsiveness: A cross-country analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 616-625, July.
    6. Valérie Bérenger & Jacques Silber, 2022. "On the Measurement of Happiness and of its Inequality," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 861-902, March.
    7. Hongliang Wang & Yiwen Yu, 2016. "Increasing health inequality in China: An empirical study with ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(1), pages 41-61, March.
    8. Paul Makdissi & Myra Yazbeck, 2017. "Robust rankings of socioeconomic health inequality using a categorical variable," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(9), pages 1132-1145, September.
    9. Nádia Simões & Nuno Crespo & Sandrina B. Moreira & Celeste A. Varum, 2016. "Measurement and determinants of health poverty and richness: evidence from Portugal," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 1331-1358, June.
    10. Yalonetzky, Gaston, 2022. "Consistent and inconsistent inequality indices for ordinal variables," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    11. Paolo Li Donni & Vito Peragine & Giuseppe Pignataro, 2014. "Ex‐Ante And Ex‐Post Measurement Of Equality Of Opportunity In Health: A Normative Decomposition," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(2), pages 182-198, February.
    12. Suman Seth and Gaston Yalonetzky, 2018. "Assessing Deprivation with Ordinal Variables: Depth Sensitivity and Poverty Aversion," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp123.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    13. Bénédicte Apouey & Jacques Silber & Yongsheng Xu, 2020. "On Inequality‐Sensitive and Additive Achievement Measures Based on Ordinal Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(2), pages 267-286, June.
    14. Tugce Cuhadaroglu, 2023. "Evaluating ordinal inequalities between groups," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(1), pages 219-231, March.
    15. Martyna Kobus & Radosław Kurek, 2019. "Multidimensional polarization for ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(3), pages 301-317, September.
    16. Bénédicte H. Apouey, 2010. "On Measuring And Explaining Socioeconomic Polarization In Health With An Application To French Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(1), pages 141-170, March.
    17. Mohammad Abu-Zaineh & Ramses H. Abul Naga, 2019. "Bread and Social Justice: Measurement of Social Welfare and Inequalities Using Anthropometrics," AMSE Working Papers 1930, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    18. Sandip Sarkar & Sattwik Santra, 2020. "Extending the approaches to polarization ordering of ordinal variables," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(3), pages 421-440, September.
    19. Debasmita Basu & Sandip Sarkar, 2023. "Polarization in Indian Education: An Ordinal Variable Approach," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 21(3), pages 569-591, September.
    20. Martyna Kobus & Olga Półchłopek & Gaston Yalonetzky, 2019. "Inequality and Welfare in Quality of Life Among OECD Countries: Non-parametric Treatment of Ordinal Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 201-232, May.
    21. Vanesa Jorda & Borja López-Noval & José María Sarabia, 2019. "Distributional Dynamics of Life Satisfaction in Europe," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 1015-1039, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Self-assessed health; Inequality; Bi-polarization; Ordinal variables;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    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:hal:wpaper:halshs-00850014. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.