 Decomposing social indicators using distributional dataBenu Bidani and Martin Ravallion No 1487, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank Abstract: Are the poor less healthy? Does public health spending matter more to them? The authors decompose aggregate health indicators using a random coefficients model in which the aggregates are regressed on the population distribution by subgroups, taking account of the statistical properties of the error term and allowing for other determinants of health status, including public health spending. This also allows them to test possible determinants of the variation in the underlying subgroup indicators. They implement the approach with data on health outcomes and poverty measures for 35 developing countries. The authors find that poor people have appreciably worse health status on average than others - and that differences in public health spending tend to matter more to the poor. This is probably because the nonpoor are in a better position to buy private health care. Keywords: Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Public Health Promotion; Health Systems Development&Reform; Health Economics&Finance; Early Child and Children's Health; Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Health Economics&Finance; Inequality; Health Systems Development&Reform; Poverty Assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1487 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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.