Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/305560 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 11318
Publisher: 
CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
We study how measures of socioeconomic health inequality inform about welfare inequality. We argue that transfers of either income or health from a better off to a worse off individual should reduce welfare inequality. Lacking an objective measure of individual welfare, we suggest that such a transfer should reduce at least one measure of inequality: inequality in income, health or socioeconomic health. This puts restrictions on measures of socioeconomic health inequality, where a correlation between income and health meets the requirement, while the concentration index only meets the requirement in a statistical sense. Finally, we show empirically that changes in the concentration index over time can be dominated by changes in income. Using data from HUNT, income changes account for 90% of the changes in the concentration index, while health and income are equally important with data from EU-SILC, with large variation across countries and years.
Subjects: 
socioeconomic inequality
health inequality
health transfers
income transfers
concentration index
JEL: 
D31
I12
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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