Health and income: A robust comparison of Canada and the US

Jean-Yves Duclos () and Damien Echevin ()

Cahiers de recherche from Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke

Abstract: This paper uses sequential stochastic dominance procedures to compare the joint distribution of health and income across space and time. It is the first application of which we are aware of methods to compare multidimensional distributions of income and health using procedures that are robust to aggregation techniques. The paper’s approach is more general than comparisons of health gradients and does not require the estimation of health equivalent incomes. We illustrate the approach by contrasting Canada and the US using comparable data. Canada dominates the US over the lower bi-dimensional well-being distribution of health and income, though not generally in terms of the marginal distribution of health. The paper also finds that well-being for both Canadians and Americans has not generally improved during the last decade over the joint distribution of income and health, in spite of the fact that the marginal distributions of income have improved during that period.

Keywords: Health inequality; Self-reported health status; Income distribution; Stochastic dominance; Social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I32 I38 D63 D30 H51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Date: 2008
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Downloads: (external link)
http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/gredi/wpapers/GREDI-0808.pdf First version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Health and Income: A Robust Comparison of Canada and the US (2009)
Working Paper: Health and Income: a Robust Comparison of Canada and the US (2009)
Working Paper: Health and Income: A Robust Comparison of Canada and the US (2009)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shr:wpaper:08-08

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