Health Inequality Research Paper

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Health Inequality
Anand and Sen (2004) describe health has been treated as a special good as it has both intrinsic and instrumental value. It directly affects a person’s capability to function and impinges on basic freedoms that individuals have reason to value, Sen (2001).
In this context, it is vital to understand why some are able to obtain this special good, crucial for basic freedoms while others can’t. The study of health inequality is gaining importance in the global sphere. Murray and Frenk (1999) mention that the World Health Organization (WHO), no longer considers average achievement (in terms of health levels) as a sufficient indicator of a country’s performance in health and is instead interested in measuring health inequality …show more content…
In this regard, it is crucial to understand the linkage between measurement of inequality in the health space and that in the income space.
The correlation between income and health has been a much- contested stream of research. Although the relation between income and health levels could be conjectured, that between their respective inequalities remains a subject of ambiguity.
It is difficult to establish causation between absolute levels of health and income, yet some correlation could be established. In particular, the relationship is claimed to be a concave one (Deaton 2008). This implies that as income increases, health status improves but after some critical level of income, the gains in health taper off. The curvature of this concave function would be contingent on the degree to which health is affected by changes in income. In particular, one may observe a more bowed curve in countries wherein dependence on private healthcare is predominant, i.e. usual market conditions …show more content…
rich getting richer. However in health space, most variation is stemming from lower or left tail, i.e. ill getting more ill.
Thirdly, health status is determined by an inter-play of multiple factors, some of them being as subjective as cultural/social norms, psychological state of primary care giver, quality of public health system. Thus, the need for a more nuanced measurement approach is in order.
Some bodies of work also document the relative importance of inequalities in both these spaces. Sen, in his book, Development as Freedom (2001), argues that low incomes are only instrumentally significant while deprivation of capabilities such as poor health is intrinsically important. Thus, one may argue that health (or other social sphere) inequalities reflect a sense of absolute deprivation better than income inequality. Further, these deprivations are often interlinked; Sen describes how economic un-freedom can breed social and political un-freedom and
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