IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wai/econwp/24-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

State Level Differences in Life Expectancy and Lifespan Inequality: Is it a Matter of Socioeconomic Inequalities?

Author

Abstract

Lifespan inequality refers to the variation in the age at which people die or the uncertainty surrounding the time of their death. This study investigates the patterns of lifespan inequality at the state level in the United States over 55 years, utilising Theil's entropy index. We also explore the demographic and socioeconomic factors associated with lifespan inequality using a Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) model. We observe a strong and statistically significant negative correlation between life expectancy and inequality in lifespan at the state level overall and for both males and females. In terms of demographic and socioeconomic factors, the percentage of individuals who have completed high school and college education, the percentage of the Hispanic population, the number of physicians, the percentage of individuals under 65 with insurance, and population growth are all negatively associated with lifespan inequality. Moreover, there is a positive association between lifespan inequality and the rates of violent crime, CO2 emissions per capita, cigarette smoking, and income inequality. Our results reiterate that policies aimed at tackling disparities in socioeconomic position could also serve as useful strategies for addressing health disparities.

Suggested Citation

  • M.D.J.W. Wijesinghe & Michael P. Cameron & Susan Olivia & Les Oxley, 2024. "State Level Differences in Life Expectancy and Lifespan Inequality: Is it a Matter of Socioeconomic Inequalities?," Working Papers in Economics 24/09, University of Waikato.
    • Handle: RePEc:wai:econwp:24/09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/2409.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vladimir Shkolnikov & Evgeny Andreev & Zhen Zhang & James Oeppen & James Vaupel, 2011. "Losses of Expected Lifetime in the United States and Other Developed Countries: Methods and Empirical Analyses," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(1), pages 211-239, February.
    2. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    3. Alyson Raalte & Hal Caswell, 2013. "Perturbation Analysis of Indices of Lifespan Variability," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(5), pages 1615-1640, October.
    4. Vladimir Shkolnikov & Evgeny M. Andreev & Alexander Begun, 2003. "Gini coefficient as a life table function," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 8(11), pages 305-358.
    5. Wilper, A.P. & Woolhandler, S. & Lasser, K.E. & McCormick, D. & Bor, D.H. & Himmelstein, D.U., 2009. "Health insurance and mortality in US adults," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 99(12), pages 2289-2295.
    6. Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2010. "The Final Inequality: Variance in Age at Death," NBER Chapters, in: Demography and the Economy, pages 209-221, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. John Wilmoth & Shiro Horiuchi, 1999. "Rectangularization revisited: Variability of age at death within human populations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 36(4), pages 475-495, November.
    8. Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2014. "Lifespan Variation by Occupational Class: Compression or Stagnation Over Time?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 73-95, February.
    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. José M. Aburto & Alyson A. van Raalte, 2017. "Lifespan dispersion in times of life expectancy fluctuation: the case of Central and Eastern Europe," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-018, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    2. Seaman, Rosie & Riffe, Tim & Leyland, Alastair H. & Popham, Frank & van Raalte, Alyson, 2019. "The increasing lifespan variation gradient by area-level deprivation: A decomposition analysis of Scotland 1981–2011," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 147-157.
    3. José Manuel Aburto & Alyson van Raalte, 2018. "Lifespan Dispersion in Times of Life Expectancy Fluctuation: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2071-2096, December.
    4. Henrik Brønnum-Hansen & Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos Espiñeira & Camila Perera & Ingelise Andersen, 2023. "Trends in mortality patterns in two countries with different welfare models: comparisons between Cuba and Denmark 1955–2020," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 1-28, June.
    5. Duncan Gillespie & Meredith Trotter & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2014. "Divergence in Age Patterns of Mortality Change Drives International Divergence in Lifespan Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1017, June.
    6. Aburto, José Manuel & Kristensen, Frederikke Frehr & Sharp, Paul, 2021. "Black-white disparities during an epidemic: Life expectancy and lifespan disparity in the US, 1980–2000," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    7. Joseph T. Lariscy & Claudia Nau & Glenn Firebaugh & Robert A. Hummer, 2016. "Hispanic-White Differences in Lifespan Variability in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(1), pages 215-239, February.
    8. Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2014. "Lifespan Variation by Occupational Class: Compression or Stagnation Over Time?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 73-95, February.
    9. Dmitri A. Jdanov & Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Alyson A. van Raalte & Evgeny M. Andreev, 2017. "Decomposing Current Mortality Differences Into Initial Differences and Differences in Trends: The Contour Decomposition Method," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(4), pages 1579-1602, August.
    10. Iñaki Permanyer & Jeroen Spijker & Amand Blanes & Elisenda Renteria, 2018. "Longevity and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment in Spain: 1960–2015," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2045-2070, December.
    11. Iñaki Permanyer & Nathalie Scholl, 2019. "Global trends in lifespan inequality: 1950-2015," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-19, May.
    12. José Manuel Aburto & James W. Vaupel & Jesús-Adrián Alvarez & Francisco Villavicencio, 2019. "The threshold age of the lifetable entropy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(4), pages 83-102.
    13. Glenn Firebaugh & Francesco Acciai & Aggie Noah & Christopher Prather & Claudia Nau, 2014. "Why Lifespans Are More Variable Among Blacks Than Among Whites in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(6), pages 2025-2045, December.
    14. Serena Vigezzi & Virginia Zarulli & Iñaki Permanyer & José Manuel Aburto, 2022. "Divergent trends in lifespan variation during mortality crises," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 46(11), pages 291-336.
    15. Shang, Han Lin & Haberman, Steven & Xu, Ruofan, 2022. "Multi-population modelling and forecasting life-table death counts," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 239-253.
    16. Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2015. "The role of smoking on mortality compression," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(20), pages 589-620.
    17. Suryakant Yadav, 2021. "Progress of Inequality in Age at Death in India: Role of Adult Mortality," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(3), pages 523-550, July.
    18. Soumya Pal & Abhishek Singh & Kaushalendra Kumar, 2022. "Inequality in length of life in India: an empirical analysis," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 315-340, September.
    19. Aburto, José Manuel & Basellini, Ugofilippo & Baudisch, Annette & Villavicencio, Francisco, 2022. "Drewnowski’s index to measure lifespan variation: Revisiting the Gini coefficient of the life table," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 1-10.
    20. Pal, Soumya, 2022. "Length of Life Inequality in India: An Empirical Analysis," SocArXiv 3kwtq, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lifespan inequality; Theil index; Socioeconomic inequality; United States;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J19 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Other

    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:wai:econwp:24/09. 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: Geua Boe-Gibson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaknz.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.