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

An open debate these days is about how national income inequality could affect individuals? health outcomes. Therefore, the present study aims to provide new evidence regarding life expectancy determinants and how they are related to the income inequality hypothesis. Precisely, it is provided new ev...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Blázquez Fernández, Carla|||0000-0002-0204-7174, Cantarero Prieto, David|||0000-0001-8082-0639, Pascual Sáez, Marta|||0000-0002-4697-5247
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Cantabria (UC)
Repositorio:UCrea Repositorio Abierto de la Universidad de Cantabria
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.unican.es:10902/15788
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10902/15788
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Income inequality
Population health
Health outcomes
Panel data
European countries
Descripción
Sumario:An open debate these days is about how national income inequality could affect individuals? health outcomes. Therefore, the present study aims to provide new evidence regarding life expectancy determinants and how they are related to the income inequality hypothesis. Precisely, it is provided new evidence on this relationship for 26 European countries during the period 1995?2014. The analysis is based on panel data techniques, with the latest data from both Eurostat and the OECD Health Statistics. Furthermore, data from the World Bank is also applied. Besides, we have tested the sensitivity of the estimates in our empirical analysis using three clusters of countries. Our results suggest that income inequality does not significantly reduce health in developed societies, like the European ones. Notwithstanding, as income inequality can be sometimes harmful for population health, these issues must be taken into account in order to improve health care policies.