Income-related Health Inequality

Health and inequality are of great significance to people’s work and life. The study about health has already beyond medical, it is associated with social and economic development, and is gaining extensive attention. The studies about health inequality appeared early internationally, and the conclusions show that there is a widely health inequality around the world. However, the study of health inequalities in China mainly appeared in the past ten years. And as an important factor of basic economic society, income has a significant influence on equitable distribution of health resources inevitably. Therefore, this article from the perspective of income, used micro tracking survey data, to study whether there is health inequality existent in our country and how it changes, on the conditions of different attitudes towards inequality. We make the following contributions:Firstly, we introduced the definition of health and health inequalities and some related empirical analysis connected with this article. Introduced various measures of estimating residents’ health condition and health inequality, which are commonly used previously. And introduced our research methods in this article detailedly.Secondly, used the latest China health and nutrition survey (CHNS) in2009, to construct QWB index to measure health level, and compared with data in2006. The analysis shows that the health condition of our residents is not increased with the income rising, but declined. The differences between urban and rural are decreasing.Thirdly, used the modified expand concentration index to measure the health inequality in our country. And measure our health performance. Results show that there is an existence of pro-rich health inequalities in our country.Fourthly, we decomposed the concentration index dynamically. In terms of income distribution and health level, we analyzed the changes in health inequality.