Mind the Gap: Revisiting the Concentration Index for Overweight

David (David Patrick) Madden

No 201722, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Much analysis of the socioeconomic gradient of overweight/obesity has involved the calculation of concentration indices for the incidence of these conditions. However this analysis ignores the severity of the conditions, in particular whether there is a gradient to how far are people above the relevant thresholds. Calculation of the concentration index for severity based measures for a dataset for Ireland reveals a much stronger gradient than for the incidence based measures. It is recommended that analysis of severity should always accompany analysis of the incidence of overweight/obesity.

Keywords: Overweight; Obesity; Socioeconomic gradient; Concentration index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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http://hdl.handle.net/10197/9096 First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201722

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