Comprehensive metrological and content analysis of the income inequality research in health field: A bibliometric analysis

The association between income inequality in a society and the poor health status of its people has attracted the attention of researchers from multiple disciplines. Based on the ISI Web of Science database, bibliometric methods were used to analyze 546 articles related to income inequality research in health field published between 1997 and 2021. We found that the USA contributed most articles, the Harvard Univ was the most influential institution, Social Science & Medicine was the most influential journal, and Kawachi I was the most influential author; the main hotspots included the income inequality, income, health inequality, mortality, socioeconomic factors, concentration index, social capital, self-rated health, income distribution, infant mortality, and population health in 1997–2021; the cardiovascular disease risk factor, social capital income inequality, individual mortality risk, income-related inequalities, understanding income inequalities, income inequality household income, and state income inequality had been the hot research topics in 1997–2003; the self-assessed health, achieving equity, income-related inequalities, oral health, mental health, European panel, occupational class, and cardiovascular diseases had been the hot research topics in 2004–2011; the adolescent emotional problem, South Africa, avoidable mortality, rising inequalities, results from world health survey, working-age adult, spatial aggregation change, prospective study, and mental health-empirical evidence had been the hot research topics in 2012–2021; there were 11 articles with strong transformation potential during 2012–2021. The research results of this paper are helpful to the scientific understanding of the current status of income inequality research in health field.