The relationship between health poverty and income poverty in Sub-Saharan African countries: evidence from index correlations

Analysis of the relationship between income and health is increasing in economic research. However, researchers in this area face controversies concerning absolute and relative income hypotheses and criticisms of statistical artefacts. This paper adopted the assumption underlying income- and health-related hypotheses that the distribution of income is correlated with the distribution of health in a society or a region. We used the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty norms to calculate the incidence, intensity, and inequality of ‘health poverty’ and ‘income poverty’ across Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and used time-series econometrics methods to analyse the relationships between the indices. The data were drawn from the World Bank indicators and covered the period from 1990 to 2017. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration bounds tests highlighted stronger cointegration between health-poverty intensity and income-poverty intensity, as well as between health-poverty inequality and income-poverty inequality. Moreover, the dynamic simulations of the ARDL relationships showed that a one-point shock in income-poverty intensity or inequality produced small increases in health-poverty intensity and inequality, respectively. The increases were not significant in the short term, but grew significantly over time, with predicted values of approximately 0.17 and 0.02, respectively. Our results highlighted that efforts to reduce population health disparities in the income- and health-poorer populations in a region should focus on both health- and income-promoting policies.