Cargando…

Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse

INTRODUCTION: Health-income inequality has been the focus of many studies. The relationship between economic conditions and health has also been widely studied. However, not much is known about how changes in aggregate economic conditions relate to health-income inequality. Nevertheless, such knowle...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey, Ragnarsdóttir, Dagný Ósk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4119249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25063235
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-13-50
_version_ 1782328938618421248
author Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey
Ragnarsdóttir, Dagný Ósk
author_facet Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey
Ragnarsdóttir, Dagný Ósk
author_sort Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Health-income inequality has been the focus of many studies. The relationship between economic conditions and health has also been widely studied. However, not much is known about how changes in aggregate economic conditions relate to health-income inequality. Nevertheless, such knowledge would have both scientific and practical value as substantial public expenditures are used to decrease such inequalities and opportunities to do so may differ over the business cycle. For this reason we examine the effect of the Icelandic economic collapse in 2008 on health-income inequality. METHODS: The data used come from a health and lifestyle survey carried out by the Public Health Institute of Iceland in 2007 and 2009. A stratified random sample of 9,807 individuals 18–79 years old received questionnaires and a total of 42.1% answered in both years. As measures of health-income inequality, health-income concentration indices are calculated and decomposed into individual-level determinants. Self-assessed health is used as the health measure in the analyses, but three different measures of income are used: individual income, household income, and equivalized household income. RESULTS: In both years there is evidence of health-income inequality favoring the better off. However, changes are apparent between years. For males health-income inequality increases after the crisis while it remains fairly stable for females or slightly decreases. The decomposition analyses show that income itself and disability constitute the most substantial determinants of inequality. The largest increases in contributions between years for males come from being a student, having low education and being obese, as well as age and income but those changes are sensitive to the income measure used. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in health and income over the business cycle can differ across socioeconomic strata, resulting in cyclicality of income-related health distributions. As substantial fiscal expenditures go to limiting the relationship between income and health, the business-cycle effect on equality, which has up until now not received much attention, needs to be considered.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4119249
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2014
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-41192492014-08-05 Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey Ragnarsdóttir, Dagný Ósk Int J Equity Health Research INTRODUCTION: Health-income inequality has been the focus of many studies. The relationship between economic conditions and health has also been widely studied. However, not much is known about how changes in aggregate economic conditions relate to health-income inequality. Nevertheless, such knowledge would have both scientific and practical value as substantial public expenditures are used to decrease such inequalities and opportunities to do so may differ over the business cycle. For this reason we examine the effect of the Icelandic economic collapse in 2008 on health-income inequality. METHODS: The data used come from a health and lifestyle survey carried out by the Public Health Institute of Iceland in 2007 and 2009. A stratified random sample of 9,807 individuals 18–79 years old received questionnaires and a total of 42.1% answered in both years. As measures of health-income inequality, health-income concentration indices are calculated and decomposed into individual-level determinants. Self-assessed health is used as the health measure in the analyses, but three different measures of income are used: individual income, household income, and equivalized household income. RESULTS: In both years there is evidence of health-income inequality favoring the better off. However, changes are apparent between years. For males health-income inequality increases after the crisis while it remains fairly stable for females or slightly decreases. The decomposition analyses show that income itself and disability constitute the most substantial determinants of inequality. The largest increases in contributions between years for males come from being a student, having low education and being obese, as well as age and income but those changes are sensitive to the income measure used. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in health and income over the business cycle can differ across socioeconomic strata, resulting in cyclicality of income-related health distributions. As substantial fiscal expenditures go to limiting the relationship between income and health, the business-cycle effect on equality, which has up until now not received much attention, needs to be considered. BioMed Central 2014-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4119249/ /pubmed/25063235 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-13-50 Text en Copyright © 2014 Ásgeirsdóttir and Ragnarsdóttir; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Ásgeirsdóttir, Tinna Laufey
Ragnarsdóttir, Dagný Ósk
Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse
title Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse
title_full Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse
title_fullStr Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse
title_full_unstemmed Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse
title_short Health-income inequality: the effects of the Icelandic economic collapse
title_sort health-income inequality: the effects of the icelandic economic collapse
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4119249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25063235
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-13-50
work_keys_str_mv AT asgeirsdottirtinnalaufey healthincomeinequalitytheeffectsoftheicelandiceconomiccollapse
AT ragnarsdottirdagnyosk healthincomeinequalitytheeffectsoftheicelandiceconomiccollapse