Causes of Inequality in Health : Who Are You? Where You Live? Or Who Your Parents Were?
Data from the British National Child Development Study show that, among 33-year-olds, ill health (as measured by cardinalized responses to a question on self-assessed health) is concentrated among the worse off. The authors seek to decompose the in...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/11/1631786/causes-inequality-health-live-or-your-parents http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19434 |
| Summary: | Data from the British National Child
Development Study show that, among 33-year-olds, ill health
(as measured by cardinalized responses to a question on
self-assessed health) is concentrated among the worse off.
The authors seek to decompose the inequalities in health
status into their socioeconomic causes. In this
decomposition, inequalities in health status depend on
inequalities in each of the underlying determinants of
health and on the elasticities of health status with respect
to each of these determinants. The authors estimate these
elasticities using regression models that allow for
unobserved heterogeneity at the community level. They find
that inequalities in unobserved community-level influences
account for only 6 percent of health inequality, and
inequalities in parental education and social class for only
4 percent. Inequalities in income and housing tenure account
for most health inequality, though inequalities in
educational attainment and in math scores at age seven also
play a part. |
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