IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/yor/hectdg/11-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring equity in health: a normative decomposition

Author

Listed:
  • Li Donni, P
  • Peragine, V
  • Pignataro G

Abstract

This paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of equality of opportunity in health, based on the path independent Atkinson index of equality. The proposed decomposition is applied both to the ex-ante and the ex-post methodologies recently adopted by the literature. The approach is applied to the measurement of equality of opportunity in health using ten waves of the British Household Panel Survey. Results confirm that socioeconomic background is an important factor determining individual health in adulthood while the incidence of equality of opportunity is around one third of the overall equality according to a substantial stable pattern over years. Our findings also depict that differences in education, in social conditions and in the life style are crucial determinants of the shape of the observed health equalities in adulthood, explaining how potential differences can be derived by the combination of different circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Li Donni, P & Peragine, V & Pignataro G, 2011. "Measuring equity in health: a normative decomposition," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 11/06, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    • Handle: RePEc:yor:hectdg:11/06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/herc/wp/11_06.pdf
    File Function: Main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2009. "Inequality of opportunity in health: evidence from a UK cohort study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(9), pages 1057-1074, September.
    3. Adam Wagstaff & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2000. "Measuring and Testing for Inequity in the Delivery of Health Care," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 35(4), pages 716-733.
    4. Mª Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Marta Urrutia, 2003. "A new factorial decomposition for the atkinson measure," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(29), pages 1-12.
    5. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia, 2008. "The ‘Extended’ Atkinson family: The class of multiplicatively decomposable inequality measures, and some new graphical procedures for analysts," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(2), pages 211-225, June.
    6. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2010. "Modelling opportunity in health under partial observability of circumstances," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 252-264, March.
    7. Gourieroux, Christian & Monfort, Alain & Renault, Eric & Trognon, Alain, 1987. "Generalised residuals," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 5-32.
    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. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:29:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Mª Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Marta Urrutia, 2005. "Path independent multiplicatively decomposable inequality measures," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 29(2), pages 379-387, May.
    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. Martyna Kobus & Marek Kapera & Vitorocco Peragine, 2020. "Measuring multidimensional inequality of opportunity," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-19, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine, 2013. "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Equality of Opportunity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(317), pages 118-130, January.

    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. 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.
    2. 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).
    3. Fleurbaey, Marc & Schokkaert, Erik, 2009. "Unfair inequalities in health and health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 73-90, January.
    4. Florence Jusot & Sandy Tubeuf & Alain Trannoy, 2013. "Circumstances And Efforts: How Important Is Their Correlation For The Measurement Of Inequality Of Opportunity In Health?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(12), pages 1470-1495, December.
    5. Francisco J. Goerlich-Gisbert & Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Marta Urrutia, 2009. "The ‘extended’ Atkinson family and changes in the expenditure distribution. Spain 1973/74-2003," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 18(1), pages 20-41, March.
    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. Xu, Ke Tom, 2006. "State-level variations in income-related inequality in health and health achievement in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 457-464, July.
    8. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9524 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Vincenzo Carrieri & Andrew M. Jones, 2018. "Inequality of opportunity in health: A decomposition‐based approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(12), pages 1981-1995, December.
    10. Ovrum, Arnstein & Rickertsen, Kyrre, 2011. "Inequality in Health Versus Inequality in Lifestyles," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114556, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5065 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. 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.
    13. Bénédicte Apouey & Jacques Silber, 2013. "Inequality and Bi-Polarization in Socioeconomic Status and Health: Ordinal Approaches," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Health and Inequality, volume 21, pages 77-109, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    14. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13753 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Vincenzo Carrieri & Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2023. "Equality of opportunity and the expansion of higher education in the UK," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 69(4), pages 861-885, December.
    16. Andrew Jones & Nigel Rice & Pedro Rosa Dias, 2012. "Quality of schooling and inequality of opportunity in health," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 369-394, April.
    17. Ziebarth, Nicolas, 2010. "Measurement of health, health inequality, and reporting heterogeneity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 116-124, July.
    18. Owen O’Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer & Adam Wagstaff, 2012. "Decomposition of Inequalities in Health and Health Care," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 17, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia, 2008. "The ‘Extended’ Atkinson family: The class of multiplicatively decomposable inequality measures, and some new graphical procedures for analysts," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(2), pages 211-225, June.
    20. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11716 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Florence Jusot & Sandy Tubeuf & Alain Trannoy, 2010. "Effort or Circumstances: Does the Correlation Matter for Inequality of Opportunity in Health?," Working Papers DT33, IRDES institut for research and information in health economics, revised Jul 2010.
    22. David Madden, 2015. "Health and Wealth on the Roller-Coaster: Ireland, 2003–2011," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 121(2), pages 387-412, April.
    23. Wiktoria Wróblewska, 2012. "Nierówności społeczne w stanie zdrowia w Polsce – analiza na podstawie samooceny stanu zdrowia oraz poziomu wykształcenia," Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis, issue 28, pages 65-84.
    24. Florence Jusot & Sabine Mage & Marta Menendez, 2014. "Inequality of Opportunity in Health in Indonesia," Working Papers DT/2014/06, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Equality of opportunity; health inequalities; Atkinson index; responsibility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    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:yor:hectdg:11/06. 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: Jane Rawlings (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deyoruk.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.