Inequalities in Health in Developing Countries: Swimming Against the Tide?
Inequalities in health have recently started to receive a good deal of attention in the developing world. But how large are they? An how large are the differences across countries? Recent data from a 42-country study, show large, but varying inequa...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/02/1721477/inequalities-health-developing-countries-swimming-against-tide http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14858 |
| Summary: | Inequalities in health have recently
started to receive a good deal of attention in the
developing world. But how large are they? An how large are
the differences across countries? Recent data from a
42-country study, show large, but varying inequalities in
health across countries. The author explores the reasons for
these inter-country differences, and concludes that large
inequalities in health, are not apparently associated with
large inequalities in income, or with small shares of
publicly financed health spending. But they are associated
with higher per capita incomes. Evidence from trends in
health inequalities - in both the developing, and the
industrial world - supports the notion that health
inequalities rise with rising per capita incomes. The
association between health inequalities, and per capita
incomes is probably due in part, to technological change
going hand-in-hand with economic growth, coupled with a
tendency for the better-off to assimilate new technology
ahead of the poor. Since increased health inequalities,
associated with rising per capita incomes is a bad thing,
and increased average health levels associated with rising
incomes are a good thing, the author outlines a way of
quantifying the tradeoff between health inequalities, and
health levels. He also suggests that successful
anti-inequality policies can be devised, but that their
success cannot be established simply by looking at
"headline" health inequality figures, since these
reflect the effects of differences, and changes in other
variables, including per capita income. The author
identifies four approaches that can shed light on the
impacts of anti-inequality policies on health inequalities:
cross-country comparative studies, country-based
before-and-after studies with controls, benefit-incidence
analysis, and decomposition analysis. The results of studies
based on these four approaches do not give as many clear-cut
answers as one might like on how best to swim against the
tide of rising per capita incomes, and their apparent
inequality-increasing effects. But they ought at least to
help us build our stock of knowledge on the subject. |
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