Income Inequality and Self-Rated Health Status: Evidence from the European Community Household Panel

Vincent Alexandre Hildebrand () and Philippe Van Kerm ()

Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: We examine the effect of income inequality on individual self-rated health status in a pooled sample of 10 member states of the European Union using longitudinal data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) survey. Taking advantage of the longitudinal and cross-national nature of our data, and carefully modelling the self-reported health information, we avoid several of the pitfalls suffered by earlier studies on this topic. We calculate income inequality indices measured at two standard levels of geography (NUTS-0 and NUTS-1) and find consistent evidence that income inequality is negatively related to self-rate health status in the European Union for both men and women. However, despite its statistical significance, the magnitude of the impact on inequality on health is small.

Keywords: self-rated health; income inequality; European Union; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-hea and nep-ltv
Date: Written
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Related works:
Working Paper: Income inequality and self-rated health status: Evidence from the European Community Household Panel (2005)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcm:sedapp:127

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