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 ()
Additional contact information
Paolo Brunori: University of Florence
Giovanna Scarchilli: University of Trento

No 14925, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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: inequality of opportunity; health equity; unhealthy lifestyle behaviours; machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp, nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - revised version published in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2022, 204, 543-565

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14925.pdf (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 (2022)
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:iza:izadps:dp14925

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().