Abstract
We use data from the British Household Panel Survey to analyse changes in poverty of self-reported health from 1991 to 2008. We use the indices recently introduced by Bennett and Hatzimasoura (Poverty measurement with ordinal data. Institute for International Economic Policy, IIEP-WP-2011-14, 2011), which can be interpreted as ordinal counterparts of the classical Foster et al. (Econometrica 52(3):761–766, 1984) poverty measures. We decompose changes in self-reported health poverty over time into within-group health poverty changes and population shifts between groups. We also provide statistical inference for the Bennett and Hatzimasoura’s (Poverty measurement with ordinal data. Institute for International Economic Policy, IIEP-WP-2011-14, 2011) indices. Results suggest that when “fair” self-reported health status is chosen as a health poverty threshold all of the used indices indicate the growth of health poverty in Britain. However, when the health poverty threshold is lower (“poor” self-reported health status) the increase in health poverty incidence was compensated by decreasing average health poverty depth and improving health inequality among those who are poor with respect to health. The subgroup decompositions suggest that the most important factors accounting for the changes in total health poverty in Britain include a rise of both health poverty and population shares of persons cohabiting and couples with no children as well as an increase of the population of retired persons.
Highlights
In recent years there has been a growing interest in analysing the distribution of self-rated health statuses in a population and its changes over time
The purpose of this paper is to analyse trends in selfreported health poverty in Britain using ordinal FGT measures of Bennett and Hatzimasoura [3] and data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period between 1991 and 2008
This paper used data from the BHPS to provide an analysis of trends in self-rated health poverty in Britain over 1991–2008
Summary
In recent years there has been a growing interest in analysing the distribution of self-rated health statuses in a population and its changes over time. In case of studies using data based on a five-point scale of self-assessed health with categories of ‘‘poor’’, ‘‘fair’’, ‘‘good’’, ‘‘very good’’ and ‘‘excellent’’, the health poverty headcount rate has been usually defined as the share of population with poor or fair health. Such a simple measure takes into account only poverty incidence, but it is insensitive to poverty depth and distribution among the poor (poverty severity) as it weights respondents with poor and fair health
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