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ON THE CARDINAL MEASUREMENT OF HEALTH INEQUALITY WHEN ONLY ORDINAL INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON INDIVIDUAL HEALTH STATUS
Author(s) -
Lazar Adi,
Silber Jacques
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.1821
Subject(s) - inequality , axiom , extension (predicate logic) , mathematics , ordinal data , econometrics , measure (data warehouse) , axiomatic system , mathematical economics , health equity , statistics , computer science , economics , data mining , health care , economic growth , mathematical analysis , geometry , programming language
This paper suggests new indices of health inequality which may be used when only ordinal information is available on individual health status. We borrow ideas from the literature on the measurement of occupational or residential segregation and show that indices of ordinal segregation which have been recently proposed may be also applied to the measurement of health inequality. We also prove that these indices satisfy four axioms introduced to measure inequality with ordered response health data so that the new indices presented in this paper are consistent with the inequality ordering proposed by Allison and Foster. We also suggest an extension of the family of indices proposed by Abul Naga and Yalcin. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.