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On the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health between countries

Author

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  • Guido Erreygers

    (University of Antwerp
    University of Melbourne)

  • Philip Clarke

    (University of Melbourne)

  • Qiong Zheng

    (University of Melbourne)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health between countries and its evolution over time, by means of population-weighted indicators. We show that rank-dependent indicators of inequality can be highly sensitive to small changes in the socioeconomic variable when estimating inequality in samples consisting of countries with large differences in population weights. Since larger countries count more than smaller countries, changes in the former tend to have bigger effects than changes in the latter. When using rank-dependent indicators, however, the sensitivity to small changes in the variable which is used for ranking can be so extreme, that the indicator may suggest trend reversals in inequality which do not really exist. An empirical study shows that this is not a freak case. The use of rank-dependent indicators may therefore produce misleading results when it comes to the measurement of population-weighted between-country inequality. We propose a simple diagnostic test to check how sensitive rank-dependent indices are to small changes in the variable used for ranking.

Suggested Citation

  • Guido Erreygers & Philip Clarke & Qiong Zheng, 2017. "On the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health between countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(2), pages 175-193, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jecinq:v:15:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10888-016-9342-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10888-016-9342-6
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    1. Guido Erreygers & Roselinde Kessels, 2017. "Socioeconomic Status and Health: A New Approach to the Measurement of Bivariate Inequality," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-23, June.
    2. Guido Erreygers & Roselinde Kessels & Linkun Chen & Philip Clarke, 2018. "Subgroup Decomposability of Income†Related Inequality of Health, with an Application to Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(304), pages 39-50, March.
    3. Ousmane Traoré, 2021. "The relationship between health poverty and income poverty in Sub-Saharan African countries: evidence from index correlations," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(10), pages 1-19, October.
    4. Mohamad A. Khaled & Paul Makdissi & Myra Yazbeck, 2018. "On the importance of the upside down test in absolute socioeconomic health inequality comparisons," Discussion Papers Series 600, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    5. Ousmane Traoré, 2022. "The effect of income on health: evidence from the poverty gaps analysis method in the sub-Saharan Africa," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 69(3), pages 401-432, September.

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