Accounting for the dead in the longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities

Dennis Petrie, Paul Allanson and Ulf-G. Gerdtham

Journal of Health Economics, 2011, vol. 30, issue 5, 1113-1123

Abstract: This paper develops an accounting framework to consider the effect of deaths on the longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities. Ignoring deaths or using Inverse Probability Weights (IPWs) to re-weight the sample for mortality-related attrition can produce misleading results. Incorporating deaths into the longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities provides a more complete picture in terms of the evaluation of health changes in respect to socioeconomic status. We illustrate our work by investigating health mobility from 1999 till 2004 using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). We show that for Scottish males explicitly accounting for the dead rather than using IPWs to account for mortality-related attrition changes the direction of the relationship between relative health changes and initial income position, from negative to positive, while for other groups it significantly increases the strength of the positive relationship. Incorporating the dead may be vital in the longitudinal analysis of health inequalities.

Keywords: Mortality; Income-related health inequality; Mobility analysis; Longitudinal data; Inverse probability weights (IPWs) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D39 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016762961100083X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Accounting for the dead in the longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities (2011)
Working Paper: Accounting for the dead in the longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities (2010)
Working Paper: Accounting for the dead in the longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities (2010)
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:eee:jhecon:v:30:y:2011:i:5:p:1113-1123

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.07.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().