Health Inequality, Education and Medical Innovation

Sherry Glied and Adriana Lleras-Muney

No 9738, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Recent studies suggest that health inequalities across socio-economic groups in the US are large and have been growing. We hypothesize that, as in other, non-health contexts, this pattern occurs because more educated people are better able than to take advantage of technological advances in medicine than are the less educated. We test this hypothesis by relating education gradients in mortality with measures medical innovation. We focus on overall mortality and cancer mortality, examining both the incidence of cancer and survival conditional on disease incidence. We find evidence supporting the hypothesis that education gradients are steeper for diseases with more innovation.

JEL-codes: I12 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06
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Published as Lleras-Muney, Adriana and Sherry Glied. “Health Inequality, Education and Medical Innovation." Demography 45, 3 (August 2008): 741-761.

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