Journal article
Does income-related health inequality change as the population ages? Evidence from swedish panel data
MK Islam, UG Gerdtham, P Clarke, K Burströ
Health Economics | Published : 2010
DOI: 10.1002/hec.1479
Abstract
This paper explains and empirically assesses the channels through which population aging may impact on incomerelated health inequality. Long panel data of Swedish individuals is used to estimate the observed trend in incomerelated health inequality, measured by the concentration index (CI). A decomposition procedure based on a fixed effects model is used to clarify the channels by which population aging affects health inequality. Based on current income rankings, we find that conventional unstandardized and age-gender-standardized CIs increase over time. This trend in CIs is, however, found to remain stable when people are instead ranked according to lifetime (mean) income. Decomposition ana..
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Awarded by European Community (EC)
Awarded by Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful for helpful comments and suggestions by the editor (Owen O'Donnell) and two anonymous referees of the journal. The authors thank Tommy Bengtsson, Terkel Christiansen, Unto Hakkinen, Carl Hampus Lyttkens, and other participants at the 27th Nordic Health Economists Study Group meeting held on 17-18th August 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the UNU-WIDER conference on Advancing Health Equity' held on 29-30th September 2006 in Helsinki, for their useful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper derives from the project 'The dynamics of income, health and inequality over the life cycle' (known as the ECuity III Project), which is funded in part by the European Community (EC)'s Fifth Framework Programme (contract QLK6-CT-2002-02297). Financial support from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (2006-1217 and 2007-0318) is gratefully acknowledged.