[afro-nets] Income inequality and health: what have learned so far?

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Income Inequality and Health: What Have We Learned So Far?
----------------------------------------------------------

S. V. Subramanian and Ichiro Kawachi

Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard
School of Public Health, Boston, MA.

Epidemiologic Reviews, 2004 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, Vol. 26, 2004 DOI:10.1093/epirev/mxh003

"In this paper, we review the published multilevel studies of
income inequality and health. Although the published evidence so
far is by no means conclusive about the relation between income
distribution and population health, our aim is to draw attention
to some emerging patterns in the accumulated findings and to
suggest future directions for research in this topic. We start,
however, by briefly rehearsing the conceptual basis for the re-
lation between income inequality and health. Since the most com-
mon statistic that is used to measure income inequality is the
Gini coefficient, we also outline a brief description of this
measure."