IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v25y2025i3p449-503n1004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality in Health Status During the COVID-19 in the UK: Does the Impact of the Second Lockdown Policy Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Simeone Enza

    (Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, 9314 University of Turin , Corso Unione Sovietica, 218 Bis, 10134 Turin, Italy)

Abstract

This work uses the models that preserve the ordinal nature of data to measure the overall health inequality in UK regions before and during the pandemic and it adopts the parametric approach to measure the portion of inequalities due to circumstances. The findings show that overall health inequalities decreased within UK regions during the pandemic, while the inequality of health opportunities remains stable in both regions. The health inequality between UK regions was greater in England than in Scotland during the pandemic, while inequalities in health opportunities were greater in Scotland than in England. This work also aims at assessing whether the trends in health inequalities could be related to the different national implementation of the second lockdown policy, also looking at the heterogeneous effect by gender. The findings show that the probability of being in the highest health status categories decreases in England by 15 percentage points for women.

Suggested Citation

  • Simeone Enza, 2025. "Inequality in Health Status During the COVID-19 in the UK: Does the Impact of the Second Lockdown Policy Matter?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 25(3), pages 449-503.
  • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:25:y:2025:i:3:p:449-503:n:1004
    DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2024-0225
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2024-0225
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejeap-2024-0225?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wagstaff, Adam & Paci, Pierella & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1991. "On the measurement of inequalities in health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 545-557, January.
    2. X. Ramos & D. Van De Gaer, 2012. "Empirical Approaches to Inequality of Opportunity: Principles, Measures, and Evidence," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/792, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    3. Nicolas Gravel & Brice Magdalou & Patrick Moyes, 2019. "Inequality measurement with an ordinal and continuous variable," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(3), pages 453-475, March.
    4. Saavedra-Chanduví, Jaime & Molinas, José R. & De Barros, Ricardo Paes & Ferreira, Francisco H. G., 2009. "Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 361.
    5. Vincenzo Carrieri & Andrew M. Jones, 2018. "Inequality of opportunity in health: A decomposition‐based approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(12), pages 1981-1995, December.
    6. Abul Naga, Ramses H. & Yalcin, Tarik, 2008. "Inequality measurement for ordered response health data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1614-1625, December.
    7. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2011. "The Measurement Of Inequality Of Opportunity: Theory And An Application To Latin America," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 57(4), pages 622-657, December.
    8. David Madden, 2010. "Ordinal and cardinal measures of health inequality: an empirical comparison," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 243-250, February.
    9. François Bourguignon & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Marta Menéndez, 2013. "Inequality of Opportunity in Brazil: A Corrigendum," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(3), pages 551-555, September.
    10. Paolo Li Donni & Vito Peragine & Giuseppe Pignataro, 2014. "Ex‐Ante And Ex‐Post Measurement Of Equality Of Opportunity In Health: A Normative Decomposition," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(2), pages 182-198, February.
    11. Lanlin Ding & Andrew M. Jones & Peng Nie, 2022. "Ex ante Inequality of Opportunity in Health among the Elderly in China: A Distributional Decomposition Analysis of Biomarkers," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(4), pages 922-950, December.
    12. John E. Roemer & Alain Trannoy, 2016. "Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1288-1332, December.
    13. Titan Alon & Matthias Doepke & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey & Michèle Tertilt, 2020. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality," NBER Working Papers 26947, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Alain Trannoy & Sandy Tubeuf & Florence Jusot & Marion Devaux, 2010. "Inequality of opportunities in health in France: a first pass," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 921-938, August.
    15. Daniele Checchi & Vito Peragine, 2010. "Inequality of opportunity in Italy," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 429-450, December.
    16. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine, 2013. "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Equality of Opportunity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(317), pages 118-130, January.
    17. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1552 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2010. "Modelling opportunity in health under partial observability of circumstances," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 252-264, March.
    19. Frédéric Chantreuil & Alain Trannoy, 2013. "Inequality decomposition values: the trade-off between marginality and efficiency," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(1), pages 83-98, March.
    20. Francisco Ferreira & Vito Peragine, 2015. "Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Evidence," SERIES 02-2015, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza - Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro", revised Jan 2015.
    21. repec:bla:econom:v:50:y:1983:i:197:p:3-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Frank A. Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2017. "Inequality with Ordinal Data," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(334), pages 290-321, April.
    23. Soichiro Yamauchi, 2020. "Difference-in-Differences for Ordinal Outcomes: Application to the Effect of Mass Shootings on Attitudes toward Gun Control," Papers 2009.13404, arXiv.org.
    24. Kranich, Laurence, 1996. "Equitable Opportunities: An Axiomatic Approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 131-147, October.
    25. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2021. "Inequality Comparisons with Ordinal Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(3), pages 547-563, September.
    26. Fleurbaey, Marc & Schokkaert, Erik, 2009. "Unfair inequalities in health and health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 73-90, January.
    27. Peter Lynn & Lucinda Platt & Alita Nandi & Violetta Parutis, 2018. "Design and implementation of a high-quality probability sample of immigrants and ethnic minorities: Lessons learnt," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 38(21), pages 513-548.
    28. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2009. "Inequality of opportunity in health: evidence from a UK cohort study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(9), pages 1057-1074, September.
    29. Ok, Efe A., 1997. "On Opportunity Inequality Measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 300-329, December.
    30. Fleurbaey, Marc, 2012. "Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653591.
    31. Florian Wendelspiess Chavez Juarez & Isidro Soloaga, 2014. "iop: Estimating ex-ante inequality of opportunity," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 14(4), pages 830-846, December.
    32. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2020. "Comparing distributions of ordinal data," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 20(3), pages 505-531, September.
    33. Johanna Fajardo-Gonzalez, 2016. "Inequality of opportunity in adult health in Colombia," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(4), pages 395-416, December.
    34. Arne Risa Hole, 2021. "Difference-in-differences with an ordinal dependentvariable: Assessing the impact of the London bombings on the safety perceptions of Muslims," Working Papers 2021005, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    35. Kobus, Martyna & Miłoś, Piotr, 2012. "Inequality decomposition by population subgroups for ordinal data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 15-21.
    36. François Bourguignon & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Marta Menéndez, 2007. "Inequality Of Opportunity In Brazil," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(4), pages 585-618, December.
    37. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01030825 is not listed on IDEAS
    38. Ricardo Paes de Barros & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Jose R. Molinas Vega & Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi, 2009. "Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2580, September.
    39. Mercedes Sastre & Alain Trannoy, 2002. "Shapley inequality decomposition by factor components: Some methodological issues," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 51-89, December.
    40. Nicolas Gravel & Brice Magdalou & Patrick Moyes, 2021. "Ranking distributions of an ordinal variable," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 33-80, February.
    41. Anthony Shorrocks, 2013. "Decomposition procedures for distributional analysis: a unified framework based on the Shapley value," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(1), pages 99-126, March.
    42. Jonathan Cribb & Monica Costa Dias & Richard Blundell & Robert Joyce & Thomas Wernham & Tom Waters & Xiaowei Xu, 2022. "Inequality and the COVID-19 Crisis in the United Kingdom," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 607-636, August.
    43. Lynn, Peter, 2009. "Sample design for Understanding Society," Understanding Society Working Paper Series 2009-01, Understanding Society at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    44. repec:dau:papers:123456789/268 is not listed on IDEAS
    45. Daniel Tzu-Hsuan Chen & Yi-Jen Wang, 2021. "Inequality-Related Health and Social Factors and Their Impact on Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from a National Survey in the UK," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-9, January.
    46. Herrero, Carmen & Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Inigo & Nieto, Jorge, 1998. "Ranking opportunity profiles on the basis of the common opportunities," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 273-289, May.
    47. Paolo Li Donni & Juan Rodríguez & Pedro Rosa Dias, 2015. "Empirical definition of social types in the analysis of inequality of opportunity: a latent classes approach," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 673-701, March.
    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. Davillas, Apostolos & Jones, Andrew M, 2020. "Ex ante inequality of opportunity in health, decomposition and distributional analysis of biomarkers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    2. Vincenzo Carrieri & Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2023. "Equality of opportunity and the expansion of higher education in the UK," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 69(4), pages 861-885, December.
    3. John E. Roemer & Alain Trannoy, 2016. "Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1288-1332, December.
    4. Vincenzo Carrieri & Andrew M. Jones, 2018. "Inequality of opportunity in health: A decomposition‐based approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(12), pages 1981-1995, December.
    5. David Pérez-Mesa & à ngel S. Marrero, 2024. "Adult health and inequality of opportunity in Spain," Working Papers 671, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13753 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Pérez-Mesa, David & Marrero, Gustavo A. & Darias-Curvo, Sara, 2021. "Child health inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa," MPRA Paper 108801, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine, 2013. "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Equality of Opportunity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(317), pages 118-130, January.
    9. Florence Jusot & Sabine Mage & Marta Menendez, 2014. "Inequality of Opportunity in Health in Indonesia," Working Papers DT/2014/06, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    10. Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M Jones, 2021. "The first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its impact on socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress in the UK," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1668-1683, July.
    11. Vincenzo Carrieri & Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2020. "A latent class approach to inequity in health using biomarker data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(7), pages 808-826, July.
    12. Davillas, A. & Jones, A.M., 2020. "The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on inequality of opportunity in psychological distress in the UK," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 20/11, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    13. Lanlin Ding & Andrew M. Jones & Peng Nie, 2022. "Ex ante Inequality of Opportunity in Health among the Elderly in China: A Distributional Decomposition Analysis of Biomarkers," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(4), pages 922-950, December.
    14. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Vito Peragine, 2015. "Equality of opportunity: Theory and evidence," Working Papers 359, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    15. Panchanan Das & Sumita Biswas, 2022. "Social Identity, Gender and Unequal Opportunity of Earning in Urban India: 2017–2018 to 2019–2020," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 65(1), pages 39-57, March.
    16. Paolo Brunori & Alain Trannoy & Caterina Francesca Guidi, 2021. "Ranking populations in terms of inequality of health opportunity: A flexible latent type approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 358-383, February.
    17. Dirk Van de gaer & Xavier Ramos, 2020. "Measurement of inequality of opportunity based on counterfactuals," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(3), pages 595-627, October.
    18. Leopoldo Cabrera & Gustavo A. Marrero & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez & Pedro Salas-Rojo, 2021. "Inequality of Opportunity in Spain: New Insights from New Data," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 237(2), pages 153-185, June.
    19. Karin Hederos & Markus Jäntti & Lena Lindahl, 2017. "Gender and inequality of opportunity in Sweden," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 605-635, December.
    20. Pedro Salas-Rojo & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2019. "The distribution of wealth in the U.S. and Spain: the role of socio-economic factors," Working Papers 506, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    21. Paolo Li Donni & Juan Rodríguez & Pedro Rosa Dias, 2015. "Empirical definition of social types in the analysis of inequality of opportunity: a latent classes approach," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 673-701, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    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:bpj:bejeap:v:25:y:2025:i:3:p:449-503:n:1004. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    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.