Report summary - The Direct Economic Burden of Socioeconomic Health Inequalities in Canada: An Analysis of Health Care Costs by Income Level.

Abstract

Canadian research indicates that individuals with lower incomes, less education or lower occupational skill levels tend to be less healthy than those who enjoy greater advantages in these areas. This uneven distribution of health across different socioeconomic status (SES) groups is referred to as "socioeconomic inequality in health." Evidence of the economic cost of health inequalities helps us understand the benefits of reducing these inequalities. However, the data needed to generate such evidence is difficult to obtain. A lack of Canadian data linking health costs and socioeconomic characteristics means that assessment of the degree to which health costs are associated with socioeconomic inequalities at the national level is limited. In order to build evidence on the cost of socioeconomic health inequalities, the Public Health Agency of Canada worked with Statistics Canada to test the feasibility of a "bottom-up" approach to compiling national health cost data. A bottom-up approach relies on individual-level data, which allows costs to be calculated by individual-level characteristics not always found in other data sources. This includes indicators of SES such as level of education or income. In this study, the population was divided into quintiles based on income, and the health care costs incurred by these five income groups were examined for a single year (2007-2008).