Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/250586 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14925
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We measure unfair health inequality in the UK using a novel data- driven empirical approach. We explain health variability as the result of circumstances beyond individual control and health-related behaviours. We do this using model-based recursive partitioning, a supervised machine learning algorithm. Unlike usual tree-based algorithms, model-based recursive partitioning does identify social groups with different expected levels of health but also unveils the heterogeneity of the relationship linking behaviors and health outcomes across groups. The empirical application is conducted using the UK Household Longitudinal Study. We show that unfair inequality is a substantial fraction of the total explained health variability. This finding holds no matter which exact definition of fairness is adopted: using both the fairness gap and direct unfairness measures, each evaluated at different reference values for circumstances or effort.
Subjects: 
machine learning
health equity
inequality of opportunity
unhealthy lifestyle behaviours
JEL: 
I14
D63
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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