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Socioeconomic inequality in life expectancy in India

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  • Asaria, Miqdad
  • Mazumdar, Sumit
  • Chowdhury, Samir
  • Mazumdar, Papiya
  • Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop
  • Gupta, Indrani

Abstract

Introduction Concern for health inequalities is an important driver of health policy in India; however, much of the empirical evidence regarding health inequalities in the country is piecemeal focusing only on specific diseases or on access to particular treatments. This study estimates inequalities in health across the whole life course for the entire Indian population. These estimates are used to calculate the socioeconomic disparities in life expectancy at birth in the population. Methods Population mortality data from the Indian Sample Registration System were combined with data on mortality rates by wealth quintile from the National Family Health Survey to calculate wealth quintile specific mortality rates. Results were calculated separately for males and females as well as for urban and rural populations. Life tables were constructed for each subpopulation and used to calculate distributions of life expectancy at birth by wealth quintile. Absolute gap and relative gap indices of inequality were used to quantify the health disparity in terms of life expectancy at birth between the richest and poorest fifths of households. results Life expectancy at birth was 65.1 years for the poorest fifth of households in India as compared with 72.7 years for the richest fifth of households. This constituted an absolute gap of 7.6 years and a relative gap of 11.7 %. Women had both higher life expectancy at birth and narrower wealth-related disparities in life expectancy than men. Life expectancy at birth was higher across the wealth distribution in urban households as compared with rural households with inequalities in life expectancy widest for men living in urban areas and narrowest for women living in urban areas. Conclusion As India progresses towards Universal Health Coverage, the baseline social distributions of health estimated in this study will allow policy makers to target and monitor the health equity impacts of health policies introduced.

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  • Asaria, Miqdad & Mazumdar, Sumit & Chowdhury, Samir & Mazumdar, Papiya & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop & Gupta, Indrani, 2019. "Socioeconomic inequality in life expectancy in India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100783, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:100783
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    1. Miqdad Asaria & Susan Griffin & Richard Cookson, 2013. "Distributional cost-effectiveness analysis: a tutorial," Working Papers 092cherp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    2. Miqdad Asaria & Susan Griffin & Richard Cookson & Sophie Whyte & Paul Tappenden, 2015. "Distributional Cost‐Effectiveness Analysis of Health Care Programmes – A Methodological Case Study of the UK Bowel Cancer Screening Programme," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 742-754, June.
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    1. Saxena, Akshar & Mendenhall, Emily, 2022. "Syndemic thinking in large-scale studies: Case studies of disability, hypertension, and diabetes across income groups in India and China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 295(C).
    2. Shreya Banerjee & Indrani Roy Chowdhury, 2020. "Inequities in curative health-care utilization among the adult population (20–59 years) in India: A comparative analysis of NSS 71st (2014) and 75th (2017–18) rounds," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-23, November.

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