 Inequality of opportunity in health: A decomposition‐based approachVincenzo Carrieri and Andrew Jones Health Economics, 2018, vol. 27, issue 12, 1981-1995 Abstract: This paper presents new decomposition‐based approaches to measure inequality of opportunity in health that capture Roemer's distinction between circumstances and effort and are consistent with both compensation and reward principles. Our approach is fully nonparametric in the way that it handles differences in circumstances and provides decompositions of both a rank‐dependent relative (the Gini coefficient) and a rank‐independent absolute inequality index (the variance). The decompositions distinguish the contribution of effort from the direct and indirect (through effort) contribution of circumstances to the total inequality. Our approach is illustrated by an empirical application that uses objectively measured biomarkers as health outcomes and as proxies for relevant effort variables. Using data from the Health Survey for England from 2003 to 2012, we find that circumstances are the leading determinant of inequality in cholesterol, glycated haemoglobin, and in a combined ill‐health index whereas effort plays a substantial role in explaining inequality in fibrinogen only. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:27:y:2018:i:12:p:1981-1995 Access Statistics for this article Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.