title: Do people die from income inequality of a decade ago?
abstract: The long-term impact of income inequality on health has not been fully explored in the current literature. Until now, 4 studies have examined the lagged effect on population/group mortality rate at the aggregate level, and 7 studies have investigated the effect of income inequality on subsequent individual mortality risk within a restricted time period. These 11 studies suffer from the same limitation: they do not simultaneously control for a series of preceding income inequalities. The results of these studies are also mixed. Using the U.S. National Health Interview Survey data 1986-2004 with mortality follow-up data 1986-2006 (n = 701,179), this study investigates the lagged effects of national-level income inequality on individual mortality risk. These effects are tested by using a discrete-time hazard model where contemporaneous and preceding income inequalities are treated as time-varying person-specific covariates, which then track a series of income inequalities that a respondent faces from the survey year until s/he dies or is censored. Findings suggest that income inequality did not have an instantaneous detrimental effect on individual mortality risk, but began exerting its influence 5 years later. This effect peaked at 7 years, and then diminished after 12 years. This pattern generally held for three measures of income inequality: the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index, and the Theil entropy index. The findings suggest that income inequality has a long-term detrimental impact on individual mortality risk. This study also explains discrepancies in the existant literature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, 107 Townshend Hall, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, United States. zheng.64@sociology.osu.edu
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zheng
mesh_terms: D016001:Confidence Intervals; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D016017:Odds Ratio; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012306:Risk; D012923:Social Class; D012935:Social Justice; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013995:Time