BACKGROUND Inequality in households' and individuals' consumption expenditures is one of the most important aspects of health status difference among households and individuals. OBJECTIVES We investigated the impact of some macro-economic factors specially inequality factors on the Iranian rural health status since 1986 through 2012. PATIENTS AND METHODS We conducted a longitudinal ecologic...

OBJECTIVES This study tests the robustness of the relationships between primary care, income inequality, and population health by (1) assessing the relationship during 4 time periods-1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995; (2) examining the independent effect of components of the primary care physician supply; (3) using 2 different measures of income inequality (Robin Hood index and Gini coefficient); and (...

1 Wilkinson RG. Income distribution and life expectancy. BMJ 1992;304:165-8. 2 Wilkinson RG. Unhealthy societies: the afflictions of inequality. London: Routledge, 1996. 3 Kaplan GA, Pamuk E, Lynch JW, Cohen RD, Balfour JL. Inequality in income and mortality in the United States: analysis of mortality and potential pathways. BMJ 1996;312:999-1003. 4 Kennedy BP, Kawachi I, Prothrow-Stith D. Inco...

An influential policy idea states that reducing inequality is beneficial for improving health in the low and middle income countries (LMICs). Our study provides an empirical test of this idea: we utilized data collected by the Demographic and Health Surveys between 2000 and 2011 in as much as 52 LMICs, and we examined the relationship between household wealth inequality and two health outcomes:...

BACKGROUND Relative socioeconomic disparities in cardiovascular mortality have increased in New Zealand, as in many Western countries in Northern Europe, the US and Australia during the late 20th century. However, substantial declines in cardiovascular mortality mean that its absolute contribution to overall mortality has decreased. RESEARCH QUESTIONS How did the absolute contribution of majo...

OBJECTIVES This study examined global inequalities in cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates as a function of cross-national variations in the Human Development Index (HDI), socioeconomic factors, Gender Inequality Index (GII), and healthcare expenditure. METHODS Age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates were calculated for women in 184 countries using the 2008 GLOBOCAN database, and ...

OBJECTIVES Busan is reported to have the highest mortality rate among 16 provinces in Korea, as well as considerable health inequality across its districts. This study sought to examine overall and cause-specific mortality and deprivation at the town level in Busan, thereby identifying towns and causes of deaths to be targeted for improving overall health and alleviating health inequality. ME...

There is a strong negative correlation between increasing life expectancy and decreasing lifespan variation, a measure of inequality. Previous research suggests that countries achieving a high level of life expectancy later in time generally do so with lower lifespan variation than forerunner countries. This may be because they are able to capitalise on lessons already learnt. However, a few co...

Vietnam has experienced rapid economic growth following the transition, which began in the mid 1980s, from a planned agriculture based economy to a more market orientated one. In this paper, the associations between socioeconomic variables and mortality for 41,000 adults in Northern Vietnam followed from January 1999 to March 2008 are estimated using Cox's proportionally hazard models. Also, we...

This paper proposes a data envelopment method to separate avoidable and unavoidable mortality risks. As unavoidable mortality is either beyond the control of humanity or likely to be very cost-ineffective to reduce in the short to medium term, avoidable mortality is of much greater practical relevance in measuring wellbeing and inequality. The new method is applied to a dataset consisting of li...