The Impact of Income Inequality on Health Levels: Empirical Evidence from China:2002–2016

ABSTRACT

Income inequality had been one of the important manifestations of social inequality, which can affect the health level by affecting savings, health care and living standards. Existing researches about the relationship between income inequality and health ignored the comprehensive characteristic of health concept, and did not consider the intrinsic relationship between health and income inequality. This paper attempts to re-shed light on the relationship. Firstly, this paper constructs a new health level evaluation system from three aspects: health basis, health environment and behavior, and health security. By means of the combination evaluation method, the health levels can be obtained. Then, considering the interaction between health and income inequality, a simultaneous equation group model is constructed to empirically test the relationship between income inequality and health levels in China. The results reveal that health level is negatively correlated with income inequality. Reducing income inequality plays an important role in improving health levels in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Income inequality
• Gini coefficient
• urban-rural gap
• health level

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the “Youth Innovation Team Plan” Project of Shandong Provincial Department of Education [2022RW056].