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Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa
BACKGROUND: Many low- and middle-income countries are experiencing an epidemiological transition from communicable to non-communicable diseases. This has negative consequences for their human capital development, and imposes a growing economic burden on their societies. While the prevalence of such...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5477415/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28629356 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0598-7 |
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author | Mukong, Alfred Kechia Van Walbeek, Corne Ross, Hana |
author_facet | Mukong, Alfred Kechia Van Walbeek, Corne Ross, Hana |
author_sort | Mukong, Alfred Kechia |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Many low- and middle-income countries are experiencing an epidemiological transition from communicable to non-communicable diseases. This has negative consequences for their human capital development, and imposes a growing economic burden on their societies. While the prevalence of such diseases varies with socioeconomic status, the inequalities can be exacerbated by adopted lifestyles of individuals. Evidence suggests that lifestyle factors may explain the income-related inequality in self-reported health. Self-reported health is a subjective evaluation of people’s general health status rather than an objective measure of lifestyle-related ill-health. METHOD: The objective of this paper is to expand the literature by examining the contribution of smoking and alcohol consumption to health inequalities, incorporating more objective measures of health, that are directly associated with these lifestyle practices. We used the National Income Dynamic Study panel data for South Africa. The corrected concentration index is used to measure inequalities in health outcomes. We use a decomposition technique to identify the contribution of smoking and alcohol use to inequalities in health. RESULTS: We find significant smoking-related and income-related inequalities in both self-reported and lifestyle-related ill-health. The results suggest that smoking and alcohol use contribute positively to income-related inequality in health. Smoking participation accounts for up to 7.35% of all measured inequality in health and 3.11% of the inequality in self-reported health. The estimates are generally higher for all measured inequality in health (up to 14.67%) when smoking duration is considered. Alcohol consumption accounts for 27.83% of all measured inequality in health and 3.63% of the inequality in self-reported health. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence that inequalities in both self-reported and lifestyle-related ill-health are highly prevalent within smokers and the poor. These inequalities need to be explicitly addressed in future programme planning to reduce health inequalities in South Africa. We suggest that policies that can influence poor individuals to reduce tobacco consumption and harmful alcohol use will improve their health and reduce health inequalities. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5477415 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54774152017-06-23 Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa Mukong, Alfred Kechia Van Walbeek, Corne Ross, Hana Int J Equity Health Research BACKGROUND: Many low- and middle-income countries are experiencing an epidemiological transition from communicable to non-communicable diseases. This has negative consequences for their human capital development, and imposes a growing economic burden on their societies. While the prevalence of such diseases varies with socioeconomic status, the inequalities can be exacerbated by adopted lifestyles of individuals. Evidence suggests that lifestyle factors may explain the income-related inequality in self-reported health. Self-reported health is a subjective evaluation of people’s general health status rather than an objective measure of lifestyle-related ill-health. METHOD: The objective of this paper is to expand the literature by examining the contribution of smoking and alcohol consumption to health inequalities, incorporating more objective measures of health, that are directly associated with these lifestyle practices. We used the National Income Dynamic Study panel data for South Africa. The corrected concentration index is used to measure inequalities in health outcomes. We use a decomposition technique to identify the contribution of smoking and alcohol use to inequalities in health. RESULTS: We find significant smoking-related and income-related inequalities in both self-reported and lifestyle-related ill-health. The results suggest that smoking and alcohol use contribute positively to income-related inequality in health. Smoking participation accounts for up to 7.35% of all measured inequality in health and 3.11% of the inequality in self-reported health. The estimates are generally higher for all measured inequality in health (up to 14.67%) when smoking duration is considered. Alcohol consumption accounts for 27.83% of all measured inequality in health and 3.63% of the inequality in self-reported health. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence that inequalities in both self-reported and lifestyle-related ill-health are highly prevalent within smokers and the poor. These inequalities need to be explicitly addressed in future programme planning to reduce health inequalities in South Africa. We suggest that policies that can influence poor individuals to reduce tobacco consumption and harmful alcohol use will improve their health and reduce health inequalities. BioMed Central 2017-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5477415/ /pubmed/28629356 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0598-7 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. 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 Mukong, Alfred Kechia Van Walbeek, Corne Ross, Hana Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa |
title | Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa |
title_full | Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa |
title_fullStr | Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa |
title_full_unstemmed | Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa |
title_short | Lifestyle and Income-related Inequality in Health in South Africa |
title_sort | lifestyle and income-related inequality in health in south africa |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5477415/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28629356 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0598-7 |
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