Education policies and health inequalities: Evidence from changes in the distribution of Body Mass Index in France, 1981–2003

Fabrice Etilé

Economics & Human Biology, 2014, vol. 13, issue C, 46-65

Abstract: This paper contributes to the debate over the effectiveness of education policies in reducing overall health inequalities as compared to public health actions directed at the less-educated. Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regressions are used to decompose the contribution of education to the changing distribution of Body Mass Index (BMI) in France, between 1981 and 2003, into a composition effect (the shift in population education due to a massive educational expansion), and a structure effect (a changing educational gradient in BMI). Educational expansion has reduced overall BMI inequality by 3.4% for women and 2.3% for men. However, the structure effect on its own has produced a 10.9% increase in overall inequality for women, due to a steeper education gradient starting from the second quartile of the distribution. This structure effect on overall inequality is also large (7.6%) for men, albeit insignificant as it remains concentrated in the last decile. Educational expansion policies can thus reduce overall BMI inequalities; but attention must still be paid to the BMI gradient in education even for policies addressing overall rather than socioeconomic health inequalities.

Keywords: Body Mass Index; Health inequality; Education; Decomposition analysis; Recentered Influence Function regressions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X13000038
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Education policies and health inequalities: Evidence from changes in the distribution of Body Mass Index in France, 1981-2003 (2014)
Working Paper: Education policies and health inequalities: Evidence from changes in the distribution of Body Mass Index in France, 1981-2003 (2014)
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:ehbiol:v:13:y:2014:i:c:p:46-65

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2013.01.002

Access Statistics for this article

Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten

More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().