Health inequality : morality and measurement / Yukiko Asada.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Asada, Yukiko.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Equality--Health aspects.

Equality.

Public health--Moral and ethical aspects.

Public health.

Public health--Social aspects.

Health services accessibility.

Equality--Health aspects--United States.

Equality--Health aspects--United States--Statistics.

United States.

Genre:

Statistics.

Physical Description:

xv, 294 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, [2007]

Summary:

This book responds to the growing interest in and need for health inequality measurement that reflects moral concerns. To that end, it aims to build a theoretical and analytical framework for measuring health inequality. This requires a philosophical investigation of the value we place on health and its distribution, as well as an examination of quantitative methodologies that transform philpsophical-concepts into useful tools for policy-making.

The uniqueness of this project lies in the marriage of philosophy and quantitative methodologies. The general goal of this book is to establish a framework for measuring health inequality where important moral and quantitative questions are critically reviewed and analysed. The framework is pluralistic. It is not my intention to defend one particular measurement based on a certain normative position. I hope this book will be useful to all those, from academics to policy-makers, who are concerned about the moral implications of health inequality in populations of various types and sizes.

Contents:

1.2 Traditional and New Approaches 10

1.3 The Aim and the Plan 17

1.5 Preliminary Discussion: Why are We Morally Interested in Health Distribution? 20

Part 1 Framework

2 Which Health Distributions Are Inequitable? 27

2.2 Equity as Equality in Health 28

2.3 Health Inequality as an Indicator of Social Justice 49

2.4 Three Egalitarian Reasons Revisited 50

3 What Measurement Choices Must Be Faced to Measure Health Inequity? 53

3.2 Issues about Health 53

3.3 Unit of Time 76

3.4 Unit of Analysis 81

3.5 Different Perspectives on Health Equity Revisited 89

4 How Can a Health Distribution Be Summarized into One Number? 95

4.3 The Five Questions: An Overview 101

4.4 The Five Questions: A Close Look 105

4.6 Framework Revisited 132

Part 2 Empirical Illustration

5 Bridging Concepts and Analysis 137

5.2 Building Blocks 140

5.3 How Healthy Were Americans on Average in 1990 and 1995? 155

6 Did Health Equity Improve in the United States between 1990 and 1995? 161

6.1 Empirical Analyses from Different Perspectives on Health Equity 161

7.2 Future Work 200

Appendix A Five Popular Health Inequality Measures 205

Appendix B Intermediate Ineguality in the WHO Health Inequality Index 211

Appendix C The Dead Imputation 216

Appendix D The Gini Coefficient 219

Appendix E The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Measure 227

Appendix F Adjustment of Household Income for Family Size and Structure 234.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [257]-279) and index.

ISBN:

9780802092441

0802092446

OCLC:

154746503