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Mortality, lifestyle and socio-economic status

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  • Silvia Balia
  • Andrew M Jones

Abstract

This paper uses the British Health and Lifestyle Survey (1984-1985) data and the longitudinal follow-up of May 2003 to investigate the de- terminants of premature mortality risk in Great Britain and the con- tribution of lifestyle choices to socio-economic inequality in health. A behavioural model, which relates premature mortality to a set of observ- able and unobservable factors, is considered. We focus on unobservable individual heterogeneity and endogeneity a®ecting the mortality equa- tion. A maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) approach for a multivari- ate probit (MVP) is used to estimate a recursive system of equations for mortality, morbidity and lifestyles. In order to detect inequality in the distribution of health within the population and to calculate the con- tribution of socio-economic factors, we compute the Gini coe±cient for overall health inequality. A decomposition analysis for predicted mor- tality shows that, after allowing for endogeneity, lifestyles contribute strongly to inequality in mortality, reducing the direct role of socio- economic status. This contradicts the view, which is widely held in epidemiology, that lifestyles make a relatively minor contribution to ob- served socio-economic gradients in health.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia Balia & Andrew M Jones, 2005. "Mortality, lifestyle and socio-economic status," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 05/02, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
  • Handle: RePEc:yor:hectdg:05/02
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mortality; Lifestyle; Socio-economic status; Multivariate Probit; Simulation-based inference; Health Inequality.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General

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