IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/757.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regional differences in socio-economic health inequalities in Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Pilar García Gómez
  • Ángel López

Abstract

This paper reports an analysis of income related health inequalities at the Autonomous Community level in Spain using the self assessed health measure in the 2001 edition of the Encuesta Nacional de Salud. We use recently developed methods in order to cardinalise and model self assessed health within a regression framework, decompose the sources of inequality and explain the observed differences across regions. We find that the regions with the highest levels of mean health tend to enjoy the lowest degrees of income related health inequality and vice-versa. The main feature characterizing regions where income related health inequality is low is the absence of a positive gradient between income and health. In turn, the regions where income related health inequality is greater are characterized by a strong and significant positive gradient between health and income. These results suggest that policies aimed at eliminating the gradient between health and income can potentially lead to greate r reductions in socio-economic health inequalities than policies aimed at redistributing income.

Suggested Citation

  • Pilar García Gómez & Ángel López, 2004. "Regional differences in socio-economic health inequalities in Spain," Economics Working Papers 757, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2004.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/757.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Watanabe, Naoko, 2003. "On decomposing the causes of health sector inequalities with an application to malnutrition inequalities in Vietnam," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 207-223, January.
    2. Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Paci, Pierella, 1989. "Equity in the Finance and Delivery of Health Care: Some Tentative Cross-country Comparisons," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 5(1), pages 89-112, Spring.
    3. van Doorslaer, Eddy & Wagstaff, Adam & Bleichrodt, Han & Calonge, Samuel & Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Gerfin, Michael & Geurts, Jose & Gross, Lorna & Hakkinen, Unto & Leu, Robert E., 1997. "Income-related inequalities in health: some international comparisons," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 93-112, February.
    4. Jaume Puig Junoy & Angel Lopez Nicoĺs, 1995. "Assessing health care infrastructure at the regional level: a statistical approach," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(12), pages 463-466.
    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. Pilar García Gómez & Ángel López Nicolás, 2005. "Socio-economic inequalities in health in Catalonia," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 175(4), pages 103-121, december.
    2. Joan Costa Font & Joan Gil Trasfi, 2006. "Socio-Economic Inequalities in Reported Depression in Spain : A Decomposition Approach," Working Papers in Economics 152, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    3. Pilar García Gómez & Angel López Nicolás, 2006. "Health shocks, employment and income in the Spanish labour market," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(9), pages 997-1009, September.

    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. Chen, Zhuo & Roy, Kakoli, 2009. "Calculating concentration index with repetitive values of indicators of economic welfare," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 169-175, January.
    2. Buhong Zheng, 2011. "A new approach to measure socioeconomic inequality in health," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 555-577, December.
    3. Granlund , David & Chuc , NT & Phuc , HD & Lindholm, Lars, 2008. "Inequality in mortality in Vietnam: unravel the causes," Umeå Economic Studies 751, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    4. M.D. Azharuddin Akhtar & Nadeem Ahmad & Indrani Roy Chowdhury, 2020. "Measuring Socio-Economic Inequality in Self-Reported Morbidity in India: Decomposition Analysis," Review of Development and Change, , vol. 25(1), pages 89-111, June.
    5. Andrew M. Jones & Angel López Nicolás, 2004. "Measurement and explanation of socioeconomic inequality in health with longitudinal data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(10), pages 1015-1030, October.
    6. A. Akhtar & Nadeem Ahmad & Indrani Roy Chowdhury, 2020. "Socio-economic inequality in catastrophic health expenditure among households in India: A decomposition analysis," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 339-369, December.
    7. 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.
    8. Andrew Jones & Ángel López Nicolás, 2006. "Allowing for heterogeneity in the decomposition of measures of inequality in health," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 4(3), pages 347-365, December.
    9. Costa Font, Joan & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & McGuire, Alistair, 2011. "Persistence despite action? Measuring the patterns of health inequality in England (1997–2007)," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 149-159.
    10. Mª Luz González Alvarez & Antonio Clavero Barranquero, 2008. "An analysis of income-related inequalities in the health care use by dynamic models," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 186(3), pages 9-42, October.
    11. Granlund, David & Chuc, Nguyen T. & Phuc, Ho D. & Lindholm, Lars, 2010. "Inequality in mortality in Vietnam during a period of rapid transition," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 232-239, January.
    12. Chen, Zhuo & Eastwood, David B. & Yen, Steven T., 2005. "Childhood Malnutrition In China: Change Of Inequality In A Decade," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19205, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    13. Pilar García Gómez & Ángel López Nicolás, 2005. "Socio-economic inequalities in health in Catalonia," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 175(4), pages 103-121, december.
    14. Carolina Navarro & Luis Ayala & José Labeaga, 2010. "Housing deprivation and health status: evidence from Spain," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 555-582, June.
    15. Tavares, Lara Patrício & Zantomio, Francesca, 2017. "Inequity in healthcare use among older people after 2008: The case of southern European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(10), pages 1063-1071.
    16. García-Gómez, Pilar & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores & Oliva-Moreno, Juan, 2015. "Inequity in long-term care use and unmet need: Two sides of the same coin," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 147-158.
    17. 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.
    18. Martins, Lurdes & Veiga, Paula, 2010. "Do inequalities in parents' education play an important role in PISA students' mathematics achievement test score disparities?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1016-1033, December.
    19. Andrew M. Jones & Ángel López-Nicolás, 2002. "The importance of individual heterogeneity in the decomposition of measures of socioeconomic inequality in health: An approach based on quantile regression," Working Papers, Research Center on Health and Economics 626, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    20. Richard Layte & Brian Nolan, 2004. "Equity in the Utilisation of Health Care in Ireland," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 35(2), pages 111-134.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health inequalities; decomnposition analysis; Spain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

    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:upf:upfgen:757. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    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.