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Health and Income Inequalities in Europe: What is the Role of Circumstances?
Building: Main Venue Building
Room: room 4
Date: 2017-02-08 04:30 PM – 06:00 PM
Last modified: 2017-01-23
Abstract
Equality of opportunity theories distinguish between inequalities due to individual effort and
those coming from external circumstances. A recent paper by Milanovic (2015) showed that half of
variability in income of World population is determined by country of birth and income distribution
within that country. Since health and income are generally strictly related, because individuals who
are better off financially tend to have better health and better health habits, in this paper, we propose
to estimate how much variability in income and in health is determined by external circumstances. We
use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal
Survey on Ageing (ELSA), two comparable multidisciplinary surveys that provide micro-level data
on health and financial resources among the elderly for a large number of European countries. Our
results show that the inclusion of early-life conditions strongly increases the explained variability for
income and health outcomes even if differently for these outcomes. Sub-sample estimates accounting
for migration, which is an effort-related variable, suggest that circumstances better explain variability
in health. Results are robust to checks and the implications of these findings are discussed.
those coming from external circumstances. A recent paper by Milanovic (2015) showed that half of
variability in income of World population is determined by country of birth and income distribution
within that country. Since health and income are generally strictly related, because individuals who
are better off financially tend to have better health and better health habits, in this paper, we propose
to estimate how much variability in income and in health is determined by external circumstances. We
use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal
Survey on Ageing (ELSA), two comparable multidisciplinary surveys that provide micro-level data
on health and financial resources among the elderly for a large number of European countries. Our
results show that the inclusion of early-life conditions strongly increases the explained variability for
income and health outcomes even if differently for these outcomes. Sub-sample estimates accounting
for migration, which is an effort-related variable, suggest that circumstances better explain variability
in health. Results are robust to checks and the implications of these findings are discussed.
Keywords
Inequality of opportunity, health and income inequalities, early-life circumstances, social determinants of health, Europe