0000000000321972
AUTHOR
G Pignataro
BEHIND THE ATKINSON INDEX: MEASURING EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IN HEALTH
This paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of equality of opportunity in health, based on the path independent Atkinson index of equality. The proposed decomposition is applied both to the ex-ante and the ex-post methodologies recently adopted by the literature. The approach is applied to the measurement of equality of opportunity in health using ten waves of the British Household Panel Survey. Results confirm that socioeconomic background is an important factor determining individual health in adulthood while the incidence of equality of opportunity is around one third of the overall equality according to a substantial stable pattern over years. Our findings also depict that dif…
Ex-ante and ex-post measurement of equality of opportunity in health: a normative decomposition.
This paper proposes and discusses two different approaches to the definition of inequality in health: the ex-ante and the ex-post approach. It proposes strategies for measuring inequality of opportunity in health based on the path-independent Atkinson equality index. The proposed methodology is illustrated using data from the British Household Panel Survey; the results suggest that in the period 2000–2005, at least one-third of the observed health equalities in the UK were equalities of opportunity.