IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v201y2018icp103-110.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The link between income inequality and health in Europe, adding strength dimensions of primary care to the equation

Author

Listed:
  • Detollenaere, Jens
  • Desmarest, Ann-Sophie
  • Boeckxstaens, Pauline
  • Willems, Sara

Abstract

Income inequality has been clearly associated with reduced population health. A body of evidence suggests that a strong primary care system may mitigate this negative association. The aim of this study is to assess the strength of the primary care system's effect on the inverse association between income inequality and health in Europe. Health is operationalised using four cross-sectional outcomes: self-rated health, life expectancy, mental well-being, and infant mortality. Strength of the primary care system is measured using the framework of the Primary Health Care Activity Monitor Europe, and income inequality by the Gini coefficient. Multiple regression models with interaction terms were used. The results confirm that especially the structure and continuity dimension of primary care strength can buffer the inverse association between income inequality and health. European policymakers should therefore focus on strengthening primary care systems in order to reduce inequity in health.

Suggested Citation

  • Detollenaere, Jens & Desmarest, Ann-Sophie & Boeckxstaens, Pauline & Willems, Sara, 2018. "The link between income inequality and health in Europe, adding strength dimensions of primary care to the equation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 103-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:201:y:2018:i:c:p:103-110
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.01.041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953618300479
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.01.041?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mansyur, Carol & Amick, Benjamin C. & Harrist, Ronald B. & Franzini, Luisa, 2008. "Social capital, income inequality, and self-rated health in 45 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 43-56, January.
    2. 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.
    3. Navarro, Vicente & Shi, Leiyu, 2001. "The political context of social inequalities and health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 481-491, February.
    4. Joseph Stiglitz & Jean-Paul Fitoussi & Peter Bofinger & Gøsta Esping-Andersen & James Galbraith & Ilene Grabel, 2014. "A Call for Policy Change in Europe," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(4), pages 5-17.
    5. Offer, Avner & Pechey, Rachel & Ulijaszek, Stanley (ed.), 2012. "Insecurity, Inequality, and Obesity in Affluent Societies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780197264980, Decembrie.
    6. 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.
    7. United Nations UN, 2015. "Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," Working Papers id:7559, eSocialSciences.
    8. Ram, Rati, 2006. "Further examination of the cross-country association between income inequality and population health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 779-791, February.
    9. Babones, Salvatore J., 2008. "Income inequality and population health: Correlation and causality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(7), pages 1614-1626, April.
    10. Era Dabla-Norris & Kalpana Kochhar & Nujin Suphaphiphat & Franto Ricka & Evridiki Tsounta, 2015. "Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality; A Global Perspective," IMF Staff Discussion Notes 15/13, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Oswald, Andrew J. & Wu, Stephen, 2010. "Objective Confirmation of Subjective Measures of Human Well-being: Evidence from the USA," IZA Discussion Papers 4695, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ki-tae Kim, 2019. "Which Income Inequality Influences Which Health Indicators? Analysis of the Income Inequality Hypothesis with Market and Disposable Gini Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 146(3), pages 473-485, December.
    2. Sher Khan, 2022. "Investigating the Effect of Income Inequality on Corruption: New Evidence from 23 Emerging Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 13(3), pages 2100-2126, September.
    3. Sulemana, Iddisah & Kpienbaareh, Daniel, 2018. "An empirical examination of the relationship between income inequality and corruption in Africa," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 27-42.
    4. Martin, Lisa & Baten, Joerg, 2022. "Inequality and Life Expectancy in Africa and Asia, 1820‐2000," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 40-59.
    5. Mihai PĂUNICĂ & Alexandru MANOLE & Cătălina MOTOFEI & Gabriela - Lidia TĂNASE, 2020. "Life Expectancy from the Perspective of Global and Individual Wealth and Expenditures: A Granger Causality Study of Some Eu Countries," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(4), pages 170-184, December.
    6. Ryan, Megan & Gallagher, Stephen & Jetten, Jolanda & Muldoon, Orla T., 2022. "State level income inequality affects cardiovascular stress responses: Evidence from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 311(C).
    7. Encarnación Álvarez-Verdejo & Pablo J. Moya-Fernández & Juan F. Muñoz-Rosas, 2021. "Single Imputation Methods and Confidence Intervals for the Gini Index," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(24), pages 1-20, December.
    8. Luo, Weixiang & Xie, Yu, 2020. "Economic growth, income inequality and life expectancy in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).

    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. Mansyur, Carol & Amick, Benjamin C. & Harrist, Ronald B. & Franzini, Luisa, 2008. "Social capital, income inequality, and self-rated health in 45 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 43-56, January.
    2. Pickett, Kate E. & Wilkinson, Richard G., 2015. "Income inequality and health: A causal review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 316-326.
    3. Jonathan K Burns & Andrew Tomita & Amy S Kapadia, 2014. "Income inequality and schizophrenia: Increased schizophrenia incidence in countries with high levels of income inequality," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 60(2), pages 185-196, March.
    4. Fiorillo, Damiano & Sabatini, Fabio, 2015. "Structural social capital and health in Italy," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 129-142.
    5. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Tom Van Ourti, 2013. "Health and Inequality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-170/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Rob Clark & Kara Snawder, 2020. "A Cross-National Analysis of Lifespan Inequality, 1950–2015: Examining the Distribution of Mortality Within Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 705-732, April.
    7. Ioana van Deurzen & Wim van Oorschot & Erik van Ingen, 2014. "The Link between Inequality and Population Health in Low and Middle Income Countries: Policy Myth or Social Reality?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-22, December.
    8. Zheng, Hui & George, Linda K., 2012. "Rising U.S. income inequality and the changing gradient of socioeconomic status on physical functioning and activity limitations, 1984–2007," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(12), pages 2170-2182.
    9. Zheng, Hui, 2012. "Do people die from income inequality of a decade ago?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 36-45.
    10. Vincens, Natalia & Emmelin, Maria & Stafström, Martin, 2018. "Social capital, income inequality and the social gradient in self-rated health in Latin America: A fixed effects analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 115-122.
    11. Nigel Kragten & Jesper Rözer, 2017. "The Income Inequality Hypothesis Revisited: Assessing the Hypothesis Using Four Methodological Approaches," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 1015-1033, April.
    12. Yen-Sheng Chiang & Jacqueline Chen Chen, 2019. "Does Inequality Cause a Difference in Altruism Between the Rich and the Poor? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 73-95, July.
    13. 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.
    14. Natalia Vincens & Martin Stafström, 2015. "Income Inequality, Economic Growth and Stroke Mortality in Brazil: Longitudinal and Regional Analysis 2002-2009," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-12, September.
    15. Roberta Torre & Mikko Myrskylä, 2014. "Income inequality and population health: An analysis of panel data for 21 developed countries, 1975-2006," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(1), pages 1-13, March.
    16. Georg Kanitsar, 2022. "The Inequality-Trust Nexus Revisited: At What Level of Aggregation Does Income Inequality Matter for Social Trust?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 171-195, August.
    17. Alassane Drabo, 2011. "Impact of Income Inequality on Health: Does Environment Quality Matter?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(1), pages 146-165, January.
    18. 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.
    19. Michael Cauvel & Miguel Alejandro Sanchez, 2023. "Life Expectancy and the Labor Share in the U.S," Working Papers PKWP2308, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    20. Johan Fritzell & Olli Kangas & Jennie Bacchus-hertzman & Blomgren, J. (Jenni), 2012. "GINI DP 64: Cross-Temporal and Cross-National Poverty and Mortality Rates among Developed Countries," GINI Discussion Papers 64, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.

    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:eee:socmed:v:201:y:2018:i:c:p:103-110. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    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.