Department of Economics, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Marktplatz 15 - Residenzschloss, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany.
Soc Sci Med. 2010 Mar;70(6):875-85. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.10.056. Epub 2009 Dec 1.
This paper uses a unique dataset-containing information collected in 2006 on individuals aged 40-79 in 21 countries throughout the world to examine whether individual income, relative income in a reference group, and income inequality are related to health status across middle/low and high-income countries. The dependent variable is self-assessed health (SAH), and as a robustness check, activities of daily living (ADL) are considered. The focus is particularly on assumptions regarding an individual's reference group and on how the estimated relationships depend on the level of economic development. Correcting for national differences in health reporting behavior, individual absolute income is found to be positively related to individual health. Furthermore, in the high-income sample, there is strong evidence that average income within a peer-age group is negatively related to health, thus supporting the relative income hypothesis. In middle/low-income countries, it is instead average regional income that is negatively associated with health. Finally, there is evidence of a negative relationship between income inequality and individual health in high-income countries. Overall, the results suggest that there might be important differences in these relationships between high-income and middle/low-income countries.
本文使用了一个独特的数据集，其中包含了 2006 年在全球 21 个国家中 40-79 岁个体的信息，旨在检验个体收入、参照群体中的相对收入以及收入不平等是否与中低收入和高收入国家的健康状况有关。因变量是自我评估健康（SAH），作为稳健性检验，还考虑了日常生活活动（ADL）。研究的重点特别在于个体参照群体的假设以及估计的关系如何取决于经济发展水平。在纠正了健康报告行为的国家差异后，发现个体的绝对收入与个体健康呈正相关。此外，在高收入样本中，有强有力的证据表明，同龄群体中的平均收入与健康呈负相关，从而支持相对收入假说。在中低收入国家，相反，是平均地区收入与健康呈负相关。最后，高收入国家的收入不平等与个体健康之间存在负相关关系的证据。总体而言，这些结果表明，高收入和中低收入国家之间这些关系可能存在重要差异。
