Do income gradients in unhealthy behaviours explain patterns of health inequalities?

Joan Costa-i-Font, Cristina Hernández-Quevedo () and Dolores Jiménez-Rubio
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Dolores Jiménez Rubio

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: More needs to be known about the origins of health inequalities and their measurement. This paper contributes by examining how the existence of income-related inequalities in unhealthy behaviours and more specifically, obesity (as a proxy for excessive food intake), alcohol intake and smoking might explain the persistence of health inequalities. We empirically examine data from two countries, England and Spain, which exhibit rising obesity levels, as well as smoking and alcohol use, drawing from unique health survey data. Furthermore, we carry out a sensitivity analysis of the influence of different robustness checks, including primarily, the definition of variables across national surveys, reporting bias associated with self-reported measures of lifestyle and the measurement of income related inequalities in lifestyle factors across countries. The results document the persistence of income inequalities in obesity and tobacco use, which disproportionately concentrate among the relatively poor. However, we find that inequalities in alcohol consumption over time tend to concentrate among relatively richer individuals in both countries examined.

Keywords: inequalities in life style factors; unhealthy behaviours; obesity; alcohol consumption; smoking; reporting bias; cross-country analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2012-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/44302/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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:ehl:lserod:44302

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().