A Health ‘Kuznets’ Curve’? Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evidence on Concentration Indices’

Joan Costa-Font, Cristina Hernández-Quevedo () and Azusa Sato
Additional contact information
Azusa Sato: London School of Economics

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 136, issue 2, No 2, 439-452

Abstract: Abstract The distribution of income related health inequalities appears to exhibit changing patterns when both developing countries and developed countries are examined. This paper tests for the existence of a health Kuznets’ curve; that is, an inverse U-shape pattern between economic developments (as measured by GDP per capita) and income-related health inequalities (as measured by concentration indices). We draw upon both cross sectional (the World Health Survey) and a long longitudinal (the European Community Household Panel survey) dataset. Our results suggest evidence of a health Kuznets’ curve on per capita income. We find a polynomial association where inequalities decline when GDP per capita reaches a magnitude ranging between $26,000 and $38,700. That is, income-related health inequalities rise with GDP per capita, but tail off once a threshold level of economic development has been attained.

Keywords: Concentration indices; Self-reported health; Health inequalities; Kuznets’ curve; Income related health inequalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I3 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-017-1558-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: A health 'Kuznets' curve'? Cross-section and longitudinal evidence on concentration indices (2018)
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:soinre:v:136:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11205-017-1558-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-017-1558-8

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().