Income Inequality and Individual Health Status: Evidence from India

Sohini Paul ()
Additional contact information
Sohini Paul: Population Council, India Habitat Centre

Journal of Quantitative Economics, 2021, vol. 19, issue 2, No 5, 269-289

Abstract: Abstract India has experienced a significant increase in income inequality in the past decade. It is widely accepted in the literature that income inequality is detrimental to individual health. Against this backdrop, the objective of the paper is to analyze the effect of income inequality on individual health status in the Indian context. We have examined two aspects: the impact of inequality on society in general and whether the effect of inequality is harsher on the poor as compared to the rich. We tested the income inequality hypothesis to answer the research questions. Using two rounds of India Human Development Survey data, a large-scale, nationally representative, panel data set collected in 2004–05 and 2011–12, we found a negative association between income inequality and individual health. Moreover, the poor are found to be the worst sufferers of income inequality and are more sensitive to ill health.

Keywords: Inequality; Income; Individual health; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40953-020-00223-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:jqecon:v:19:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s40953-020-00223-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40953

DOI: 10.1007/s40953-020-00223-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Quantitative Economics is currently edited by Dilip Nachane and P.G. Babu

More articles in Journal of Quantitative Economics from Springer, The Indian Econometric Society (TIES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().