Shifting dollars, saving lives: what might happen to mortality rates, and socio-economic inequalities in mortality rates, if income was redistributed?

Abstract

Personal or household income predicts mortality risk, with each additional dollar of income conferring a slightly smaller decrease in the mortality risk. Regardless of whether levels of income inequality in a society impact on mortality rates over and above this individual-level association (i.e., the 'income inequality hypothesis'), the current consensus is that narrowing income distributions will probably improve overall health status and reduce socio-economic inequalities in health. Our objective was to quantify this impact in a national population using 1.3 million 25-59-year-old respondents to the New Zealand 1996 census followed-up for mortality over 3 years. We modelled 10-40% shifts ..