Health, Welfare and Inequality
Abstract
This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to study the relationship between health status and economic welfare at household level. We develop a model to estimate the welfare cost of ill health by exploiting the methodology of the equivalence scales. The crucial variables in this approach are, besides the health status (measured in several dimensions), the economic decisions of the household which can be directly related to health conditions, such as health-related expenses. By estimating a demand system we derive health-equivalence scales to learn about the cost of health conditions on economic welfare, controlling for other covariates. Our estimates suggest that – when taking account of health – the welfare of households in poor health drops substantially and inequality increases. There are important social welfare costs associated with differences in the health status of the elderly in the USA.Download Info
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari" in its series Working Papers with number 2006_41.Length: 32 pages
Date of creation: 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ven:wpaper:2006_41
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Related research
Keywords: welfare cost; health; inequality;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
- I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General Welfare
- J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
References
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- Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-55, March-Apr.
- Le Grand, Julian, 1991. "The distribution of health care revisited: A commentary on Wagstaff, van Doorslaer and Paci, and O'Donnell and Propper," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 239-245, July.
- Le Grand, Julian, 1978. "The Distribution of Public Expenditure: The Case of Health Care," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 45(178), pages 125-42, May.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Paulus, Alari & Sutherland, Holly & Tsakloglou, Panos, 2009.
"The Distributional Impact of In Kind Public Benefits in European Countries,"
IZA Discussion Papers
4581, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Alari Paulus & Holly Sutherland & Panos Tsakloglou, 2010. "The distributional impact of in-kind public benefits in European countries," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 243-266.
- Paulus, Alari & Sutherland, Holly & Tsakloglou, Panos, 2009. "The distributional impact of in kind public benefits in European countries," EUROMOD Working Papers EM10/09, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
- Christos Koutsampelas & Panos Tsakloglou, 2012.
"The distribution of full income in Greece,"
University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics
03-2012, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
- Panos Tsakloglou & Christos Koutsampelas, 2012. "The distribution of full income in Greece," DEOS Working Papers 1207, Athens University of Economics and Business.
- Koutsampelas, Christos & Tsakloglou, Panos, 2012. "The Distribution of Full Income in Greece," IZA Discussion Papers 6396, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
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