| Resumen: |
Differences in health and especially those associated to socioeconomic or regional differences in the EU trouble the researchers involved in health inequality measurement for many years. According to Masseria (2009), “the measurement and monitoring of inequalities in health over time and across countries is not straightforward since the choice of the measure will influence the results”. Therefore, the choice of the appropriate indicators for health inequality measurement is a crucial matter, not only for the accurate estimation of the magnitude of inequality, but also for the proper monitoring of its variation through time.
Performing a trend analysis with “health inequality” data was one of the main objectives of this study. To this end, the first task was to select appropriate indicators for the measurement, through a detailed evaluation of existing proposals. This evaluation focused on the ability of an indicator to capture inequalities and also to monitor existing trends. The existing EU data on
mortality, morbidity and also self perceived health played the most important role in this
analysis. A prerequisite was for these data to be available for all EU Member States and for a significant number of years (over 5 years, if possible).
The main objective in the analysis was the comparison between various social groups. The Odds ratios were extremely useful in most of the cases, since they are directly oriented to between-groups comparisons. The application of the Odds Ratio always implies the comparison of two groups, usually the extreme ones (e.g. poor vs. non poor). On the contrary, the entropy type indices and the concentration index evaluate the whole data distribution and estimate the distribution of health in all social categories together.
Significant inequalities have been estimated in this part of the analysis with respect to income level, activity status, educational level, etc. E.g. “more health” is concentrated in the higher socioeconomic levels, characterised by higher (tertiary) education and higher income. In other words, for numerous EU Member States and the EU as a whole, health inequalities are present and are in favour of individuals with higher socioeconomic status. Further improvements in the measurement of health and extensions in the existing harmonized
survey instruments (e.g. EU SILC) can only improve the measurement of health inequalities based on the tools suggested in this report. |
