A health 'Kuznets' curve'? Cross-section and longitudinal evidence on concentration indices

Joan Costa-Font, Cristina Hernández-Quevedo () and Azusa Sato

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

Abstract: The distribution of income related health inequalities appears to exhibit changing patterns when both developing countries and developed countries are examined. This paper tests for the existence of a health Kuznets' curve, that is an inverse U-shape pattern between economic developments measured by GDP per capita) and income-related health inequalities (as measured by concentration indices). We draw upon both cross section (the World Health Survey) and a long longitudinal (the European Community Household Panel survey) dataset. Our results suggest evidence of a health Kuznets' curve on per capita income. Our findings point towards the existence of a polynomial association where inequalities decline when GDP per capita reaches a magnitude ranging between $26,000 and $38,700.That is, income-related health inequalities rise with GDP per capita, but tail off once a threshold level of economic development has been attained.

Keywords: concentration indices; self-reported health; health inequalities; Kuznets’ curve; income related health inequalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I3 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Social Indicators Research, 1, April, 2018, 136(2), pp. 439-452. ISSN: 0303-8300

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68782/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A Health ‘Kuznets’ Curve’? Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evidence on Concentration Indices’ (2018)
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:68782

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 ().