Model-based recursive partitioning to estimate unfair health inequalities in the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study

Paolo Brunori, Apostolos Davillas, Andrew Jones and Giovanna Scarchilli

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We measure unfair health inequality in the UK using a novel data-driven empirical approach. We explain health variability as the result of circumstances beyond individual control and health-related behaviours. We do this using model-based recursive partitioning, a supervised machine learning algorithm. Unlike usual tree-based algorithms, model-based recursive partitioning does identify social groups with different expected levels of health but also unveils the heterogeneity of the relationship linking behaviors and health outcomes across groups. The empirical application is conducted using the UK Household Longitudinal Study. We show that unfair inequality is a substantial fraction of the total explained health variability. This finding holds no matter which exact definition of fairness is adopted: using both the fairness gap and direct unfairness measures, each evaluated at different reference values for circumstances or effort.

Keywords: health equity; inequality of opportunity; machine learning; unhealthy lifestyle behaviours (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2022-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 1, December, 2022, 204, pp. 543 - 565. ISSN: 0167-2681

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117404/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Model-based Recursive Partitioning to Estimate Unfair Health Inequalities in the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (2022)
Working Paper: Model-based recursive partitioning to estimate unfair health inequalities in the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (2022)
Working Paper: Model-based Recursive Partitioning to Estimate Unfair Health Inequalities in the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (2021)
Working Paper: Model-Based Recursive Partitioning to Estimate Unfair Health Inequalities in the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:117404

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager (lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk).