On correcting the concentration index for binary variables

Kjellsson, Gustav; Gerdtham, Ulf G.

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.10.012

Cited by 159 publications

(151 citation statements)

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“…Interested readers may refer to Petrie and Tang (2008) (Wagstaff, 2009;Kjellsson and Gerdtham, 2013;Kjellsson et al, 2015;Petrie et al, 2015). Hereafter we refer to the standardized Gini as Giniw for Gini Wagstaff.…”

Section: -----------------------------------------mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Bogin

Scheffler

Hermanussen³

2017

American J Hum Biol

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Objectives: Average adult height of a population is considered a biomarker of the quality of the health environment and economic conditions. The causal relationships between height and income inequality, are not well understood. We analyse data from 169 countries for national average height of men and women and national level economic factors to test the two hypotheses: 1) income inequality has a greater association with average adult height than does absolute income; 2) neither income nor income inequality has an effect on sexual dimorphism in height. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r P e e r R e v i e w 2 include Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Income per capita adjusted for personal purchasing power (GNI_PPP), and income equality assessed by the Gini coefficient calculated by the Wagstaff method. MethodsResults: Hypothesis 1 is supported. Greater income equality is most predictive of average height for both sexes. Greater per capita purchasing power explains a significant, but smaller, amount of the variation. . National GDP has no association with height. Hypothesis 2 is rejected. With greater average adult height there is greater sexual dimorphism. Conclusions:Findings support a growing literature on the pernicious effects of inequality on growth in height and, by extension, on health. Gradients in height reflect gradients in social disadvantage. Inequality should be considered a pollutant that disempowers people from the resources needed for their own healthy growth and development and for the health and good growth of their children. -----------------------------------------This article is derived from the 2016 Human Biology Association Plenary Session titled "Worldwide variation in human growth -40 years later." The title of the symposium is taken from the 1 st and 2 nd editions of books of the same title by PhyllisEveleth and James Tanner (Eveleth & Tanner 1991). Contributions to the symposium were meant to update the topics included in Eveleth and Tanner's books.The purpose of this article is to update and evaluate worldwide variation in economic and social factors that influence the biology of adult height. We analyze national level data for measured heights for the year 1996 of men and women in 169 countries.We conduct the analysis based on two hypotheses: 1) that income inequality has a greater association with average adult height than absolute income, and 2) that sexual dimorphism in adult height remains fairly constant under different conditions of income and income inequality. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 In the present analysis we employ as measures of income the national GDP (to...

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Section: -----------------------------------------mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Bogin

Scheffler

Hermanussen³

2017

American J Hum Biol

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“…A potential problem may arise when the health variable is restricted [6][7][8][9][10]. While the concentration index for an unrestricted variable is asymptotically bounded in the (−1; 1) interval, this does not hold true for restricted health outcomes: Wagstaff [6] has shown that the bounds of the concentration index for binary health outcomes depend inversely on the mean.…”

Section: Correcting the Concentration Index For Restricted Health Varmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, comparing health inequalities between populations with rather different overall population health (e.g. the prevalence of a disease or the share of immunized infants) without accounting for the prevalence-dependency of the underlying inequality measure may lead to misleading results [6][7][8][9][10]. Moreover, the choice as to whether one measures health attainments or shortfalls may also have considerable impact on the results [9,10].…”

Section: Correcting the Concentration Index For Restricted Health Varmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the prevalence of a disease or the share of immunized infants) without accounting for the prevalence-dependency of the underlying inequality measure may lead to misleading results [6][7][8][9][10]. Moreover, the choice as to whether one measures health attainments or shortfalls may also have considerable impact on the results [9,10]. The same holds true for longitudinal analyses of health inequalities in which the level of the health variable may change over time or, in case of several chronic diseases, vary considerably with age [11][12][13].…”

Section: Correcting the Concentration Index For Restricted Health Varmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While all correction methods aim to produce comparable results, all of them have rather different properties and implications [6][7][8][9][10]. The key criterion when deciding how to account for variations in mean health is one's notion of the most unequal scenario; a rather normative decision [9,10]. Erreygers [7] provides a technical discussion of a set of alternative approaches, while an intuitive discussion of their various properties, interpretations and policy implications can be found in Kjellsson et al [14].…”

Section: Correcting the Concentration Index For Restricted Health Varmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities: methods, challenges and applications

Siegel

Allanson

2015

Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research

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longitudinal data, more sophisticated approaches to monitor inequalities and to identify potential causal relationships between socioeconomic status and health evolved. We first review the concentration index and some more basic approaches to explain health inequalities. We then discuss advantages and potential shortcomings of static and dynamic health inequality measures. We review different concepts of health and socioeconomic mobility, as well as recent studies on the life course perspective and economic changes. Our aim is to provide an overview of the concepts and empirical methodologies in the current literature, and to guide interested researchers in their choice of an appropriate inequality measure.

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On the Choice of Health Inequality Measure for the Longitudinal Analysis of Income‐related Health Inequalities

Allanson

Petrie

2012

Health Economics

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Changes in rank-dependent income-related health inequality measures over time may usefully be decomposed into contributions due to changes in health outcomes and changes in individuals' positions in the income distribution. This paper establishes the normative implications of this type of decomposition by embedding it within a broader analysis of changes in the ‘health achievement’ index. We further show that the choice of health inequality measure implies a particular vertical equity judgement, which may be expressed on a common scale in terms of the concentration index of health changes that would be inequality preserving. We illustrate the empirical implications of this choice by reporting results from a longitudinal analysis of changes in income-related health inequality in Great Britain using the concentration, the Erreygers and Wagstaff indices of health attainments and the concentration index of health shortfalls. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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On correcting the concentration index for binary variables

Cited by 159 publications

References 15 publications

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Longitudinal analysis of income-related health inequalities: methods, challenges and applications

On the Choice of Health Inequality Measure for the Longitudinal Analysis of Income‐related Health Inequalities

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