Hill Terrence D, Jorgenson Andrew
The University of Arizona, School of Sociology, P.O. Box 210027, Social Sciences Building, Room 400, 1145 E. South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
Boston College, Department of Sociology, McGuinn Hall 426, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
Health Place. 2018 Jan;49:1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.11.001. Epub 2017 Nov 9.
We test whether income inequality undermines female and male life expectancy in the United States. We employ data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia and two-way fixed effects to model state-level average life expectancy as a function of multiple income inequality measures and time-varying characteristics. We find that state-level income inequality is inversely associated with female and male life expectancy. We observe this general pattern across four measures of income inequality and under the rigorous conditions of state-specific and year-specific fixed effects. If income inequality undermines life expectancy, redistribution policies could actually improve the health of states.
我们检验了收入不平等是否会损害美国男性和女性的预期寿命。我们使用了美国50个州和哥伦比亚特区的数据，并采用双向固定效应模型，将州级平均预期寿命作为多种收入不平等衡量指标和随时间变化特征的函数进行建模。我们发现，州级收入不平等与男性和女性的预期寿命呈负相关。我们在四种收入不平等衡量指标下以及在特定州和特定年份固定效应的严格条件下都观察到了这一总体模式。如果收入不平等会损害预期寿命，那么再分配政策实际上可能会改善各州的健康状况。
