Disparities in premature mortality: Evidence for the OECD countries

Abstract

This paper studies the existence of international health outcome disparities. We focus on the use of the potential years of life lost for a database that includes information from 33 OECD countries and covers the period 1990–2017. The methodology proposed by Phillips and Sul (2007) allows us to reject the existence of a single pattern of behaviour between countries for both males and females, suggesting the existence of severe health outcome inequalities. This methodology estimates the existence of four convergence clubs whose composition slightly varies when comparing the male and female cases. Some socioeconomic factors are found to be very important in explaining the forces that may drive the creation of these convergence clubs. In particular, the evolution of the economy and health policies are pivotal to understanding the creation of these estimated convergence clubs. Additionally, our results offer evidence in favor of the importance of environmental policies to explain these health outcome differences.