IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/269.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income Inequality, the Psycho-social Environment and Health Comparisons of Wealthy Nations

Author

Listed:
  • John Lynch
  • George Smith
  • Marianne Hillemeier
  • Trivellore Raghunathan
  • George Kaplan
  • Mary Shaw

Abstract

Is the extent of income inequality associated with average population health differences between wealthy countries? And, are between-country variations in indicators of the psychosocial environment associated with between-country health differences? This study carries out the most complete international examination to date of associations between income inequality and low birth weight, life expectancy, self-rated health, and age- and cause-specific mortality among countries providing data in Wave III of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The LIS is widely regarded as the premier study of income distribution in the world. The study also examines how aspects of the psycho-social environment such as distrust, belonging to organizations, volunteering (all proposed as measures of social capital) and perceived control over ones life circumstances were associated with between-country variations in health. Included is data on belonging to trade unions and the proportion of women elected to national government, as indicators of class relations within the labour market and broader socio-political participation of women.

Suggested Citation

  • John Lynch & George Smith & Marianne Hillemeier & Trivellore Raghunathan & George Kaplan & Mary Shaw, 2001. "Income Inequality, the Psycho-social Environment and Health Comparisons of Wealthy Nations," LIS Working papers 269, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/269.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kawachi, I. & Kennedy, B.P. & Lochner, K. & Prothrow-Stith, D., 1997. "Social capital, income inequality, and mortality," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(9), pages 1491-1498.
    2. Kennedy, Bruce P. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Prothrow-Stith, Deborah & Lochner, Kimberly & Gupta, Vanita, 1998. "Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 7-17, July.
    3. Judge, Ken & Mulligan, Jo-Ann & Benzeval, Michaela, 0. "Income inequality and population health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 567-579, February.
    4. Lynch, John, 2000. "Income inequality and health: expanding the debate," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(7), pages 1001-1005, October.
    5. Lynch, J.W. & Kaplan, G.A. & Pamuk, E.R. & Cohen, R.D. & Heck, K.E. & Balfour, J.L. & Yen, I.H., 1998. "Income inequality and mortality in metropolitan areas of the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(7), pages 1074-1080.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ken Judge & Iain Paterson, 2001. "Poverty, Income Inequality and Health," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/29, New Zealand Treasury.
    2. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2002. "Income Inequality and Health Status in the United States: Evidence from the Current Population Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(3), pages 510-539.
    3. Anne Ellaway & Sally Macintyre & Ade Kearns, 2001. "Perceptions of Place and Health in Socially Contrasting Neighbourhoods," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 38(12), pages 2299-2316, November.
    4. Wilkinson, Richard G & Pickett, Kate E., 2006. "Income inequality and population health: A review and explanation of the evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1768-1784, April.
    5. Grönqvist, Hans & Johansson, Per & Niknami, Susan, 2012. "Income inequality and health: Lessons from a refugee residential assignment program," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 617-629.
    6. Herzer, Dierk & Nunnenkamp, Peter, 2015. "Income inequality and health: Evidence from developed and developing countries," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-56.
    7. Angus Deaton, 2003. "Health, Inequality, and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 113-158, March.
    8. Shortt, S. E. D., 2004. "Making sense of social capital, health and policy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 11-22, October.
    9. Li, Hongbin & Zhu, Yi, 2006. "Income, income inequality, and health: Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 668-693, December.
    10. Chang, Virginia W. & Christakis, Nicholas A., 2005. "Income inequality and weight status in US metropolitan areas," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 83-96, July.
    11. Antony, Jürgen & Klarl, Torben, 2020. "Estimating the income inequality-health relationship for the United States between 1941 and 2015: Will the relevant frequencies please stand up?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    12. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 1999. "Re-Examining the Evidence of an Ecological Association between Income Inequality and Health," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 9922, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    13. Nicole Grunewald & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, 2014. "Green Growth in Mexico, Brazil and Chile: Policy strategies and future prospects," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 229, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Hutchinson, Rebbeca N. & Putt, Mary A. & Dean, Lorraine T. & Long, Judith A. & Montagnet, Chantal A. & Armstrong, Katrina, 2009. "Neighborhood racial composition, social capital and black all-cause mortality in Philadelphia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 1859-1865, May.
    15. Veenstra, Gerry, 2005. "Location, location, location: contextual and compositional health effects of social capital in British Columbia, Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 2059-2071, May.
    16. Ioana Pop & Erik Ingen & Wim Oorschot, 2013. "Inequality, Wealth and Health: Is Decreasing Income Inequality the Key to Create Healthier Societies?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 1025-1043, September.
    17. Vincent Hildebrand & Philippe Kerm, 2009. "Income inequality and self-rated health status: Evidence from the european community household panel," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 46(4), pages 805-825, November.
    18. Sungik Kang & Ja-Hoon Koo, 2023. "Exploring Social Capital Level in Regions with Large and Increasing Wealth Inequality: Lesson from Seoul, South Korea," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 165-183, August.
    19. Urszula Markowska-Przybyła & David M. Ramsey, 2018. "Social Capital and Long-Term Regional Development within Poland in the Light of Experimental Economics and Data from a Questionnaire," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-26, August.
    20. Leigh, Andrew & Jencks, Christopher, 2007. "Inequality and mortality: Long-run evidence from a panel of countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-24, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.