Avoiding blindness to health status in health achievement and health inequality measurement

Paul Makdissi (paul.makdissi@uottawa.ca) and Myra Yazbeck (myazbeck@uottawa.ca)

Social Science & Medicine, 2016, vol. 171, issue C, 39-47

Abstract: The concentration index, being focused on the socioeconomic dimension of health inequality and overlooking aversion to pure health inequality, can produce ethically contestable rankings of health distributions. A health transfer from a sicker but richer individual to healthier but poorer individual will decrease the concentration index. This paper presents a new class of health inequality indices that avoid this limitation by trading off socioeconomic-related health inequality against pure health inequality.

Keywords: Health inequality; Health achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Working Paper: Avoiding Blindness to Health Status in Health Achievement and Health Inequality Measurement (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:171:y:2016:i:c:p:39-47

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.10.027

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