Time and chance happen to them all? Duration modelling versus lifetime incidence of cancer

Daniel Howdon

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: While current work on socioeconomic inequality in cancer looks at lifetime incidence of cancer, it is more informative to consider survival times: healthy time lived without cancer. This paper uses the rst wave of, and latest longitudinal follow-up to, the Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS) to investigate the social gradient in cancer, considering both lifetime incidence and duration models of time-to-cancer. Contrary to previous work on the relationship between circumstances and the development of cancer, notably Deaton (2002), a social gradient in time to cancer is observed, with those in the lowest two social classes developing cancer signi cantly (at the 5% level of signi cance) sooner than individuals in the highest social class. This relationship holds after excluding smokers from the sample. No gradient is observed when only lifetime incidence of cancer is considered.

Keywords: health; duration analysis; smoking; mortality; inequality of opportunity; determinants of health; lifestyles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C41 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:12/06

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