Abstract
Previous research has confirmed a positive association between income and health, but there are still a lot of inconsistencies on how income affects health. Indeed, this impact is caused by overlaying of absolute income and relative income effects, and only by decomposing and comparing their relative importance within an integrated framework can suggestions be made for health inequalities and health intervention. To deal with this issue, using the panel data from the 2011, 2014, and 2017 waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), a well-designed research model is established to decompose and explore the impact. Our results indicate that relative income, rather than absolute income, has a significant negative impact on health performance, and that these associations may be causal in nature. The health inequity persists throughout the life cycle, but it remains relatively stable, without significant expansion or convergence. To some extent, the research-proposed models enrich the related literature on associations between income and health, and the empirical results suggest that as China moves to the stage of higher incomes and accelerated aging, the Chinese government should pay more attention to income inequality and be alert to the risks of “income-healthy poverty” traps.
Highlights
Health is considered as one of the fundamental rights of human beings
The result shows that the increase of absolute income does not necessarily mean the synchronous improvement of elderly health, relative income is the main cause of health disparity, and the health disparity among different income groups persists throughout the life cycle, but is relatively stable, and there is no significant expansion or convergence with age
The influence of income on health is manifested as the superposition of absolute income and relative income effects
Summary
Health is considered as one of the fundamental rights of human beings. WHO (1946). In a lot of literature on health equity or health disparity, the relationships between income and health have been focused on in the fields of economics, public health, and welfare economics. Can we improve health by increasing income? By decomposing the two effects and comparing their relative importance in the same framework can we provide a reference for improving health inequality and seeking health intervention approaches. This article constructs a decomposition method of the two effects under the same framework and designs ideas on how to control one effect when discussing the other effect On this basis, it constructs an absolute income and relative income effect test model and further examines the age characteristics of the effect. The result shows that the increase of absolute income does not necessarily mean the synchronous improvement of elderly health, relative income is the main cause of health disparity, and the health disparity among different income groups persists throughout the life cycle, but is relatively stable, and there is no significant expansion or convergence with age
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