Relative Deprivation, Inequality, and Mortality
(CHW WP#6) Relative deprivation, inequality, and mortality Angus Deaton Research Program in Development Studies & Center for Health and Wellbeing Princeton University First complete draft, January 2001 (Drafts, January and March 2000) I gratefully acknowledge helpful discussions with Nancy Adler, David Cutler, Sandy Jencks, Norm Johnson, Charles Lin, Michael Marmot, Doug Miller, Christina Paxson, and Jim Smith. Anne Case provided particularly helpful and insightful comments which eliminated much confusion. I thank especially Richard Wilkinson, whose work and suggestions have inspired much of this work. Although I have tried to construct a model that captures what seems to me to be the spirit of his ideas, I bear sole responsibility for the results. Helpful comments were received from seminar participants at the NBER Healthcare Workshop in March 2000, at the Harris School at the University of Chicago in May 2000, and at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin in May 2000. I acknowledge financial support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as from the NIA through the NBER. Relative deprivation, inequality, and mortality ABSTRACT I present a model of mortality and income which attempts to integrate the “gradient,” the negative relationship between income and mortality, with the Wilkinson hypothesis, that income inequality poses a risk to health. I postulate that individual health is negatively affected by relative deprivation within a reference group, defined as the ratio to group mean income of the total “weight” of incomes of group members better-off than the individual. I argue that such a model is consistent with what we know about the way in which social status affects health, based on both animal and human models.
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