IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/lunewp/2011_004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Correcting the Concentration Index for Binary Variables

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper discusses measurement of socioeconomic inequalities in prevalence of a health condition. As its point of departure, it uses the recent exchange between Guido Erreygers and Adam Wagstaff in this journal, where they discuss merits of their own corrections of the frequently used concentration index. The paper first reconciles the debate between Erreygers and Wagstaff and discusses the value judgments that are hidden behind their indices. Secondly, it discusses when the property level independence is desirable. Thirdly, it empirically illustrates whether and when the choice of index affects comparisons between contexts using binary health indicators from the European Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE). The results show that choice of index matters and that it not only affects the magnitude of measured inequalities but also internal ranking between countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Kjellsson , Gustav & Gerdtham, Ulf-G, 2011. "Correcting the Concentration Index for Binary Variables," Working Papers 2011:4, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2011_004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://project.nek.lu.se/publications/workpap/papers/WP11_4.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lasso de la Vega, Casilda & Aristondo, Oihana, 2012. "Proposing indicators to measure achievement and shortfall inequality consistently," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 578-583.
    2. Erreygers, Guido, 2009. "Correcting the Concentration Index: A reply to Wagstaff," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 521-524, March.
    3. Udaya S Mishra & William Joe, 2010. "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Childhood Undernutrition in India An Application of the Corrected Concentration Index," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(1), pages 847-854.
    4. Clarke, Philip M. & Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Johannesson, Magnus & Bingefors, Kerstin & Smith, Len, 2002. "On the measurement of relative and absolute income-related health inequality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(11), pages 1923-1928, December.
    5. Guido Erreygers & Tom Van Ourti, 2011. "Putting the cart before the horse. A comment on Wagstaff on inequality measurement in the presence of binary variables," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1161-1165, October.
    6. 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.
    7. Wagstaff, Adam, 2009. "Correcting the concentration index: A comment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 516-520, March.
    8. Erreygers, Guido & Van Ourti, Tom, 2011. "Measuring socioeconomic inequality in health, health care and health financing by means of rank-dependent indices: A recipe for good practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 685-694, July.
    9. Adam Wagstaff, 2011. "The concentration index of a binary outcome revisited," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1155-1160, October.
    10. Adam Wagstaff, 2005. "The bounds of the concentration index when the variable of interest is binary, with an application to immunization inequality," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(4), pages 429-432, April.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10510 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Erreygers, Guido, 2009. "Correcting the Concentration Index," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 504-515, March.
    13. 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)

    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. Kristof Bosmans, 2016. "Consistent Comparisons of Attainment and Shortfall Inequality: A Critical Examination," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(11), pages 1425-1432, November.
    3. 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.
    4. Erreygers, Guido & Van Ourti, Tom, 2011. "Measuring socioeconomic inequality in health, health care and health financing by means of rank-dependent indices: A recipe for good practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 685-694, July.
    5. Adam Wagstaff, 2011. "Reply to Guido Erreygers and Tom Van Ourti's comment on ‘The concentration index of a binary outcome revisited’," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1166-1168, October.
    6. Laia Maynou & Marc Saez & Jordi Bacaria & Guillem Lopez-Casasnovas, 2015. "Health inequalities in the European Union: an empirical analysis of the dynamics of regional differences," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(5), pages 543-559, June.
    7. Merino Ventosa, María & Urbanos-Garrido, Rosa M.maria.merino.ven@gmail.com, 2016. "Disentangling effects of socioeconomic status on obesity: A cross-sectional study of the Spanish adult population," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 216-224.
    8. FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2011. "Equity in health and health care," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Joachim Frick & Nicolas Ziebarth, 2013. "Welfare-related health inequality: does the choice of measure matter?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(3), pages 431-442, June.
    10. Mohammad Habibullah Pulok & Kees Gool & Mohammad Hajizadeh & Sara Allin & Jane Hall, 2020. "Measuring horizontal inequity in healthcare utilisation: a review of methodological developments and debates," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(2), pages 171-180, March.
    11. Paul Allanson & Dennis Petrie, 2014. "Understanding The Vertical Equity Judgements Underpinning Health Inequality Measures," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(11), pages 1390-1396, November.
    12. Adam Wagstaff, 2011. "The concentration index of a binary outcome revisited," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1155-1160, October.
    13. Derek Asuman & Ama Pokuaa Fenny & Doreen Nyarko Anyamesem Odame, 2021. "Trends and antecedents of inequalities in maternal healthcare coverage in four African countries," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 515-544, April.
    14. Sam Harper & Eric Ruder & Henry A. Roman & Amelia Geggel & Onyemaechi Nweke & Devon Payne-Sturges & Jonathan I. Levy, 2013. "Using Inequality Measures to Incorporate Environmental Justice into Regulatory Analyses," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-21, August.
    15. Costa-Font, Joan & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores, 2014. "Income inequalities in unhealthy life styles in England and Spain," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 66-75.
    16. Olufunke Alaba & Lumbwe Chola, 2014. "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Adult Obesity Prevalence in South Africa: A Decomposition Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-20, March.
    17. Makdissi, Paul & Yazbeck, Myra, 2014. "Measuring socioeconomic health inequalities in presence of multiple categorical information," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 84-95.
    18. Guido Erreygers & Tom Van Ourti, 2011. "Putting the cart before the horse. A comment on Wagstaff on inequality measurement in the presence of binary variables," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1161-1165, October.
    19. Baeten, Steef & Van Ourti, Tom & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2013. "Rising inequalities in income and health in China: Who is left behind?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1214-1229.
    20. John E. Ataguba, 2022. "A short note revisiting the concentration index: Does the normalization of the concentration index matter?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(7), pages 1506-1512, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    health inequalities; socioeconomic inequality; concentration index; binary variables;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    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:hhs:lunewp:2011_004. 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: Iker Arregui Alegria (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/delunse.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.