IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/iserwp/2020-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unmet health care need and income-related horizontal equity in access during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Davillas, Apostolos
  • M. Jones, Andrew

Abstract

Using monthly data from the Understanding Society (UKHLS) COVID-19 Survey we analyse the evolution of unmet need and assess how the UK health care system performed against the norm of horizontal equity in health care access during the first wave of COVID-19 wave. Unmet need was most evident for hospital care, and less pronounced for primary health services (medical helplines, GP consultations, local pharmacist advice, over the counter medications and prescriptions). Despite this, there is no evidence that horizontal equity, with respect to income, was violated for NHS hospital outpatient and inpatient care during the first wave of the pandemic. There is evidence of pro-rich inequities in access to GP consultations, prescriptions and medical helplines at the peak of the first wave, but these were eliminated as the pandemic progressed. There are persistent pro-rich inequities for services that relate to individuals’ ability to pay (over the counter medications and advice from the local pharmacist).

Suggested Citation

  • Davillas, Apostolos & M. Jones, Andrew, 2020. "Unmet health care need and income-related horizontal equity in access during the COVID-19 pandemic," ISER Working Paper Series 2020-15, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2020-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2020-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric French & Elaine Kelly & Richard Cookson & Carol Propper & Miqdad Asaria & Rosalind Raine, 2016. "Socio‐Economic Inequalities in Health Care in England," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 37, pages 371-403, September.
    2. Erreygers, Guido, 2009. "Correcting the Concentration Index: A reply to Wagstaff," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 521-524, March.
    3. 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.
    4. Adam Wagstaff, 2005. "The bounds of the concentration index when the variable of interest is binary, with an application to immunization inequality," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(4), pages 429-432, April.
    5. Erreygers, Guido & Van Ourti, Tom, 2011. "Measuring socioeconomic inequality in health, health care and health financing by means of rank-dependent indices: A recipe for good practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 685-694, July.
    6. Erreygers, Guido, 2009. "Correcting the Concentration Index," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 504-515, 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. Carrieri, Vincenzo & Wuebker, Ansgar, 2013. "Assessing inequalities in preventive care use in Europe," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(3), pages 247-257.
    2. Carrieri, V. & Wuebker, A., 2012. "Assessing inequalities in preventive care use in Europe: A special case of health-care inequalities?," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 12/25, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    3. Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2021. "Unmet health care need and income‐Related horizontal equity in use of health care during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1711-1716, July.
    4. FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2011. "Equity in health and health care," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    5. Mohammad Habibullah Pulok & Kees Gool & Mohammad Hajizadeh & Sara Allin & Jane Hall, 2020. "Measuring horizontal inequity in healthcare utilisation: a review of methodological developments and debates," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(2), pages 171-180, March.
    6. 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.
    7. Peng Nie & Andrew E. Clarck & Conchita D'Ambrosio & Lanlin Ding, 2020. "Income-related health inequality in urban China (1991-2015): The role of homeownership and housing conditions," Working Papers 524, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    8. Paul Allanson & Dennis Petrie, 2014. "Understanding The Vertical Equity Judgements Underpinning Health Inequality Measures," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(11), pages 1390-1396, November.
    9. García-Gómez, Pilar & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores & Oliva-Moreno, Juan, 2015. "Inequity in long-term care use and unmet need: Two sides of the same coin," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 147-158.
    10. Pulok, Mohammad Habibullah & van Gool, Kees & Hall, Jane, 2020. "Horizontal inequity in the utilisation of healthcare services in Australia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(11), pages 1263-1271.
    11. Azharuddin Akhtar & Indrani Roy Chowdhury, 2023. "The socioeconomic inequity in healthcare utilization among individuals with cardiovascular diseases in India," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 1000-1018, May.
    12. Roselinde Kessels & Guido Erreygers, 2019. "A direct regression approach to decomposing socioeconomic inequality of health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 884-905, July.
    13. Adam Wagstaff, 2011. "The concentration index of a binary outcome revisited," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1155-1160, October.
    14. Kjellsson, Gustav & Gerdtham, Ulf-G., 2013. "On correcting the concentration index for binary variables," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 659-670.
    15. Aristides dos Santos, Anderson Moreira & Perelman, Julian & Jacinto, Paulo de Andrade & Tejada, Cesar Augusto Oviedo & Barros, Aluísio J.D. & Bertoldi, Andréa D. & Matijasevich, Alicia & Santos, Iná S, 2019. "Income-related inequality and inequity in children’s health care: A longitudinal analysis using data from Brazil," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 127-137.
    16. Van de Poel, Ellen & Van Doorslaer, Eddy & O’Donnell, Owen, 2012. "Measurement of inequity in health care with heterogeneous response of use to need," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 676-689.
    17. Marion Devaux, 2015. "Income-related inequalities and inequities in health care services utilisation in 18 selected OECD countries," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(1), pages 21-33, January.
    18. Derek Asuman & Ama Pokuaa Fenny & Doreen Nyarko Anyamesem Odame, 2021. "Trends and antecedents of inequalities in maternal healthcare coverage in four African countries," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 515-544, April.
    19. Pulok, Mohammad Habibullah & van Gool, Kees & Hall, Jane, 2020. "Inequity in physician visits: the case of the unregulated fee market in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    20. Costa-Font, Joan & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores, 2014. "Income inequalities in unhealthy life styles in England and Spain," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 66-75.

    More about this item

    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
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality

    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:ese:iserwp:2020-15. 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: Jonathan Nears (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcessuk.html .

    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.