Accounting for trends in health poverty: a decomposition analysis for Britain, 1991–2008

Abstract

We use data from the British Household Panel Survey to analyse changes in poverty of self-reported health from 1991 to 2008. We use the indices recently introduced by Bennett and Hatzimasoura (Poverty measurement with ordinal data. Institute for International Economic Policy, IIEP-WP-2011-14, 2011), which can be interpreted as ordinal counterparts of the classical Foster et al. (Econometrica 52(3):761–766, 1984) poverty measures. We decompose changes in self-reported health poverty over time into within-group health poverty changes and population shifts between groups. We also provide statistical inference for the Bennett and Hatzimasoura’s (Poverty measurement with ordinal data. Institute for International Economic Policy, IIEP-WP-2011-14, 2011) indices. Results suggest that when “fair” self-reported health status is chosen as a health poverty threshold all of the used indices indicate the growth of health poverty in Britain. However, when the health poverty threshold is lower (“poor” self-reported health status) the increase in health poverty incidence was compensated by decreasing average health poverty depth and improving health inequality among those who are poor with respect to health. The subgroup decompositions suggest that the most important factors accounting for the changes in total health poverty in Britain include a rise of both health poverty and population shares of persons cohabiting and couples with no children as well as an increase of the population of retired persons.

Does Rising Income Inequality Reduce Life Expectancy? New Evidence for 26 European Countries (1995–2014)

“…The most common explanation for the IIH is that as income inequality grows, psychosocial stress rises, which declines the population health due to higher levels of competition and stress involved (Subramanian & Kawachi, 2004;Layte & Whelan, 2014). Moreover, income inequality causes that there are more poor people, who have relatively bad health status (Gravelle et al, 2002;Brezinski, 2015).…”

The dynamics of health poverty in Spain during the economic crisis (2008–2016)

“…There are some papers which prove that health trends to be worse in those societies with greater income differences [16][17][18]. The studies of Meer et al [19], Buddelmeyer and Cai [20], Ásgeirsdóttir and Ragnarsddóttir [21], Brzezinski [2], Mackenbach et al [22], Simões et al [23] and Ivaldi et al [24] analyse the relationship between poverty and health. The main difference between these papers are the methodology used.…”

“…Ásgeirsdóttir and Ragnarsddóttir [21] calculate the Concentration Index and the Absolute Concentration Index; Brzezinski [2] uses the FGT index; Mackenbach et al [22] and Simões et al [23] propose an ordered probit model; and Ivaldi et al [24] present factor analysis and Pena distance, a non-parametric method and another parametric, respectively.…”

“…According to the area considered, Ásgeirsdóttir and Ragnarsddóttir [21], Mackenbach et al [22] and Ivaldi et al [24] focus their studies on Europe. More specifically, Brzezinski [2] analyse Great Britain while Simões et al [23] do it for Portugal. By Meer et al [19] examine the United States; and Buddelmeyer and Cai [20] analyse the case of Australia.…”

“…On the one hand, in the case of SAH, individuals assess their own health as poor if they believe that another person of the same gender, age, education level or income, is much healthier than them. On the other hand, individuals are poor in health when their health are below the chosen health poverty threshold [1][2].…”