Wealth Inequality and Health Achievement: Relating novel measures of wealth distribution to child and maternal mortality
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Background GDP per capita is arguably the single most predictive determinant of health at the national level, yet such a measure fails to capture the complexity of wealth (and thus health) distribution within a population.Health at the individual level has been shown to be associated with asset-based measures of wealth, but the relationship hasn't been demonstrated consistently at the national level.Currently existing wealth and inequality measures are not comparable across surveys, across countries, or across time.In this thesis, I quantify wealth inequality using an asset-based measure by country and year, from 1990 to 2010, and study associations between inequality and several measures of health through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals.Methods I generate a global asset-based wealth index that is comparable across countries and over time using 461 surveys from 140 countries, anchoring this scale on assets with low differential item functioning.I then translate this to an international dollar scale for the calculation of a modified Gini coefficient and ratio of 90 th to 10 th percentiles.I then investigate the relationship between such measures and child and maternal mortality in terms of levels, trends and thresholds of improvement in the Millennium Development Goal 4 & 5 targets after controlling for other known determinants of these health outcomes.
Author: Nicole E. Johns
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2795611592