Income Inequality, Economic Development, and Population Health: A Global Gradient?

• In Event: 1453 - Regular Session on Development

Abstract

Cross-national empirical research on the link from income inequality to population health produces a range of conflicting conclusions. Income inequality sometimes improves, sometimes harms, and often has no effect on population health. We reconcile these mixed findings by proposing that economic development moderates the relationship between income inequality and health. We estimate fixed effects models with multiple measures of income inequality and population health to examine the degree to which the relationship between income inequality and population health varies with economic development. Consistent with our intervention, we find that development moderates the association between income inequality and two measures of population health, which closely track distinct channels through which inequality is thought to harm population health. Our findings produce two broad generalizations. First, we observe a global gradient in the relationship between income inequality and population health whereby the former has worse impacts on the latter in poor countries than in rich ones. Second, income inequality may be either a proximate or conditional cause of lower population health in which material mechanisms at the macro-level play a larger role than psychological processes at the level of individuals.

Authors

• Michaela Kathleen Curran, University of California-Riverside

• Matthew C. Mahutga, University of California-Riverside