Equity in Health and Equivalent Incomes

Erik Schokkaert , Carine van De Voorde , Brigitte Dormont (1, 2, 3) , Marc Fleurbaey (4) , Stephane Luchini (5) , Anne-Laure Samson (3) , Clémence Thebaut (2)

1 CEPREMAP - Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications
2 LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine
3 Legos - Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion des Organisations de Santé
4 Woodrow Wilson School and Center for Human Values
5 GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille

We compare two approaches to measuring inequity in the health distribution. The first is the concentration index. The second is the calculation of the inequality in an overall measure of individual well-being, capturing both the income and health dimensions. We introduce the concept of equivalent income as a measure of well-being that respects preferences with respect to the trade-off between income and health, but is not subjectively welfarist since it does not rely on the direct measurement of happiness. Using data from a representative survey in France, we show that equivalent incomes can be measured using a contingent valuation method. We present counterfactual simulations to illustrate the different perspectives of the approaches with respect to distributive justice.

Keywords: Economie quantitative

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Erik Schokkaert, Carine van De Voorde, Brigitte Dormont, Marc Fleurbaey, Stephane Luchini, et al.. Equity in Health and Equivalent Incomes. Dias, Pedro Rosa and O’Donnell, Owen. Health and Inequality, 21, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.131-156, 2013, Research on Economic Inequality, 978-1-78190-553-1. ⟨hal-01500857⟩