Socioeconomic Status and Health: A New Approach to the Measurement of Bivariate Inequality

Guido Erreygers and Roselinde Kessels
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Roselinde Kessels: Department of Economics, University of Antwerp & Flemish Research Foundation (FWO), 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: We suggest an alternative way to construct a family of indices of socioeconomic inequality of health. Our indices belong to the broad category of linear indices. In contrast to rank-dependent indices, which are defined in terms of the ranks of the socioeconomic variable and the levels of the health variable, our indices are based on the levels of both the socioeconomic and the health variable. We also indicate how the indices can be modified in order to introduce sensitivity to inequality in the socioeconomic distribution and to inequality in the health distribution. As an empirical illustration, we make a comparative study of the relation between income and well-being in 16 European countries using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Wave 4.

Keywords: inequality measurement; socioeconomic inequality of health; bivariate inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Working Paper: Socioeconomic status and health: A new approach to the measurement of bivariate inequality (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:7:p:673-:d:102411

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