Abstract:
What effect does rising income inequality have on mortality rates in developed countries? In particular, does the rise of the super-wealthy or the top 0.01% of the population effect overall health of the population? This paper focuses on the effect of rising income inequality on mortality rates of men and women in a subset of OECD countries over six decades from 1950-2008. The authors used adult mortality as the outcome measure and the inverted Pareto-Lorenz coefficient as the preferred measure of income inequality and obtained the latest and precise data on the income inequality measure. They used a panel co-integration econometric framework to address some of the challenges posed by more conventional methods. The findings show that for industrialized countries with co-integrated series, income inequality appears to have a long-run significant negative effect on mortality risk for both men and women, that is, an increase in income inequality does not appear to lower annualized adult mortality rates.