Measuring health inequalities between genders and age groups with realization of potential life years (RePLY).
OBJECTIVE
We propose a new method to measure health inequalities caused by conditions amenable to policy intervention and use this to identify health differences between sexes and age groups.


METHODS
The lowest observed mortality rates are used as a proxy of unavoidable mortality risks to develop a new measure of health outcome - realization of potential life years (RePLY). The RePLY distribution is used to measure avoidable health inequalities between sex and age groups respectively.


RESULTS
Using RePLY we find that even those countries with very high life expectancy at birth can have substantial health inequalities across different age groups. Also, gender inequality is more pronounced among those aged < 30. Among countries with a life expectancy < 60 years, there is a much larger prevalence of gender inequality against females; countries with life expectancy > 60 years have comparable numbers of cases of inequality among females and males. Finally, high avoidable health inequality is associated with low average income, high income inequality and high population fractionalization.


CONCLUSIONS
It is important to distinguish between unavoidable and avoidable mortality when measuring health outcomes and their distribution in society. The proposed new measure (RePLY) enables policy-makers to focus on age-sex groups with low realization of potential life years and thus high avoidable mortality risks.
Tang
Kam Ki
KK
School of Economics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. kk.tang@uq.edu.au
Petrie
Dennis
D
Rao
D S Prasada
DS
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019049:Developed Countries; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008017:Life Expectancy / Q000639:trends*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*