IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v75y2012i3p531-537.html

Revealing mental health status in Iran's capital: Putting equity and efficiency together

Author

Listed:
  • Morasae, Esmaeil Khedmati
  • Forouzan, Ameneh Setareh
  • Asadi-Lari, Mohsen
  • Majdzadeh, Reza

Abstract

Information about urban health is often based on averages, while to better understand health status in urban areas, inequality should also be included. In this paper, we applied an achievement index approach in order to surmount this defect and to examine mental health status in Iran's capital, Tehran. The data we required for this study were taken from the Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool (Urban HEART) survey which was conducted in Tehran in 2007, covering people aged 15 and above. The concentration index, which is a commonly used measure of socioeconomic inequalities in health, was extended to enable the combination of inequality and averages and the formation of a mental health achievement index. Values from the standard concentration indices showed that mental disorders are concentrated disproportionately among the poor in Tehran. An extension of the standard concentration indices revealed that, in most of Tehran's districts, the mental health of populations in the poorest quintile is much worse than that of other groups. In addition, when we computed the achievement index and ranked districts according to this index, the ranking was different from the ranking by averages. These findings imply that mental health varies significantly across the economic groups of the population in Tehran and that efficiency-oriented strategies which target average level of mental health alone are not sufficient to improve mental health of all people especially mental health of the poor. Equity-oriented strategies which target the mental health inequalities should be considered as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Morasae, Esmaeil Khedmati & Forouzan, Ameneh Setareh & Asadi-Lari, Mohsen & Majdzadeh, Reza, 2012. "Revealing mental health status in Iran's capital: Putting equity and efficiency together," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 531-537.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:3:p:531-537
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.04.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612003231
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.04.003?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

    for a different version of it.

    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. Artazcoz, L. & Benach, J. & Borrell, C. & Cortès, I., 2004. "Unemployment and Mental Health: Understanding the Interactions among Gender, Family Roles, and Social Class," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 94(1), pages 82-88.
    3. Wagstaff, Adam, 2002. "Inequality aversion, health inequalities and health achievement," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 627-641, July.
    4. Xu, Ke Tom, 2006. "State-level variations in income-related inequality in health and health achievement in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 457-464, July.
    5. Patel, Vikram & Araya, Ricardo & de Lima, Mauricio & Ludermir, Ana & Todd, Charles, 1999. "Women, poverty and common mental disorders in four restructuring societies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(11), pages 1461-1471, December.
    6. repec:wbk:wbpubs:6896 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Joan Costa-Font & Joan Gil, 2008. "Would Socio-Economic Inequalities in Depression Fade Away with Income Transfers?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 539-558, December.
    8. Deon Filmer & Lant Pritchett, 2001. "Estimating Wealth Effects Without Expenditure Data—Or Tears: An Application To Educational Enrollments In States Of India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(1), pages 115-132, February.
    9. Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jones, Andrew M. & López-Nicolás, Angel & Rice, Nigel, 2006. "Socioeconomic inequalities in health: A comparative longitudinal analysis using the European Community Household Panel," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(5), pages 1246-1261, September.
    10. Wildman, John, 2003. "Income related inequalities in mental health in Great Britain: analysing the causes of health inequality over time," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 295-312, March.
    11. Harpham, Trudy, 1994. "Urbanization and mental health in developing countries: A research role for social scientists, public health professionals and social psychiatrists," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 233-245, July.
    12. Almeida-Filho, Naomar & Lessa, Ines & Magalhães, Lucélia & Araújo, Maria Jenny & Aquino, Estela & James, Sherman A. & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2004. "Social inequality and depressive disorders in Bahia, Brazil: interactions of gender, ethnicity, and social class," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(7), pages 1339-1353, October.
    13. Kakwani, Nanak & Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1997. "Socioeconomic inequalities in health: Measurement, computation, and statistical inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 87-103, 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. Clarke, Philip M. & Hayes, Alison J., 2009. "Measuring achievement: Changes in risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 552-561, February.
    2. Philip Clarke & Tom Van Ourti, 2009. "Correcting the Bias in the Concentration Index when Income is Grouped," CEPR Discussion Papers 599, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    3. Batana, Yélé Maweki, 2010. "Evolution of social inequalities in health in Quebec?," MPRA Paper 20710, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Costa-Font, Joan & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina, 2012. "Measuring inequalities in health: What do we know? What do we need to know?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 195-206.
    5. Erreygers, Guido & Clarke, Philip & Van Ourti, Tom, 2012. "“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?”—Distributional sensitivity in the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 257-270.
    6. Clarke, Philip & Van Ourti, Tom, 2010. "Calculating the concentration index when income is grouped," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 151-157, January.
    7. William Joe & U. S. Mishra & K. Navaneetham, 2009. "Inequalities in Childhood Malnutrition in India: Some Evidence on Group Disparities," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 417-439.
    8. Chen, Zhuo & Roy, Kakoli, 2009. "Calculating concentration index with repetitive values of indicators of economic welfare," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 169-175, January.
    9. Khaled, Mohamad A. & Makdissi, Paul & Yazbeck, Myra, 2018. "Income-related health transfers principles and orderings of joint distributions of income and health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 315-331.
    10. Udaya S. Mishra, 2016. "Measuring Progress Towards MDGs in Child Health: Should Base Line Sensitivity and Inequity Matter?," Working Papers id:10705, eSocialSciences.
    11. Sam Harper & Eric Ruder & Henry A. Roman & Amelia Geggel & Onyemaechi Nweke & Devon Payne-Sturges & Jonathan I. Levy, 2013. "Using Inequality Measures to Incorporate Environmental Justice into Regulatory Analyses," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-21, August.
    12. Olufunke Alaba & Lumbwe Chola, 2014. "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Adult Obesity Prevalence in South Africa: A Decomposition Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-20, March.
    13. Bago d'Uva, Teresa & Jones, Andrew M. & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2009. "Measurement of horizontal inequity in health care utilisation using European panel data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 280-289, March.
    14. Van Ourti, Tom & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Koolman, Xander, 2009. "The effect of income growth and inequality on health inequality: Theory and empirical evidence from the European Panel," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 525-539, May.
    15. Xu, Ke Tom, 2006. "State-level variations in income-related inequality in health and health achievement in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 457-464, July.
    16. Tzu-Ying Chen & Yi-Hsin Elsa Hsu & Rachel J. Huang & Larry Y. Tzeng, 2021. "Making socioeconomic health inequality comparisons when health concentration curves intersect," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(4), pages 875-899, November.
    17. Adam Wagstaff & Daniel Cotlear & Patrick Hoang-Vu Eozenou & Leander R. Buisman, 2016. "Measuring progress towards universal health coverage: with an application to 24 developing countries," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 32(1), pages 147-189.
    18. Mishra, Udaya S., 2016. "Measuring progress towards MDGs in child health: Should base level sensitivity and inequity matter?," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 70-81.
    19. Vallejo-Torres, Laura & Morris, Stephen, 2010. "The contribution of smoking and obesity to income-related inequalities in health in England," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1189-1198, September.
    20. M. Kamrul Islam & Ulf‐G. Gerdtham & Philip Clarke & Kristina Burström, 2010. "Does income‐related health inequality change as the population ages? Evidence from Swedish panel data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 334-349, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:3:p:531-537. 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.