Ulf Gerdtham
Professor
Estimating the Causal Impact of Macroeconomic Conditions on Income-Related Mortality
Author
Summary, in English
To-date the macroeconomic conditions-mortality literature on income-related inequality in mortality has relied on subgroup analysis, mainly using income as a stratification variable, but this nearly always causes selection bias yielding results that are hard to interpret. To solve this bad control problem, we apply a novel technique based on recentered influence function regression of overall income-related mortality measures, like the commonly used concentration index. We also highlight the importance of: i) measurement of relative versus absolute inequality; ii) measurement of inequality by population-level statistics of inequality (concentration indices) versus subgroup analysis; iii) measurement of short versus long-term income. We illustrate these issues and our suggested solution using detailed individual-level administrative data from Sweden. Our findings show that there overall is a (insignificant) counter-cyclical impact on mortality and its income-related inequality. During a sub-period of pronounced and significant counter-cyclical mortality we find support for accompanying counter-cyclical income-related inequality, but only when using short-term income.
Department/s
- Centre for Economic Demography
- Health Economics
- Department of Economics
- EpiHealth: Epidemiology for Health
Publishing year
2020-11-09
Language
English
Publication/Series
Working papers
Issue
2020:22
Links
Document type
Working paper
Topic
- Economics
Keywords
- Mortality
- Macroeconomic conditions
- Unemployment
- Recentered influence function
- Inequality
- Concentration index
- E32
- I14
Status
Published
Research group
- Health Economics