Analysing the socioeconomic determinants of health in Europe: new evidence from the EU-SILC

Abstract

This paper shows an analysis of inequalities in suffering health limitations in daily activity by using the EU-SILC longitudinal data for the waves 2005 to 2007 in 20 European Member States for which data was available. Inequalities in health limitations were measured using the concentration index approach. We complement the analysis with a decomposition analysis of the Concentration Indices in order to disentangle the main contributors of the income-related inequalities in health. We find evidence of income-related inequalities in health for all the countries analysed, although they present a heterogeneous pattern over time. The regression analysis shows that demographic factors such as age and gender pre-determine an individual to report health limitations. Besides, factors such as activity status, education and different indicators of social exclusion are highly associated with perceiving health limitations in daily activity, as showed by the results of the regression analysis as well as the decomposition analysis. The limitations of this study are further discussed in a methodological working paper (Hernández-Quevedo et al, 2010)