Decomposing health achievement and socioeconomic health inequalities in presence of multiple categorical information

Abstract

Although most of the measurement approaches in health inequality measurement assume the existence of a ratio-scale variable, most of the information on health available in population surveys is given in the form of categorical variables. This may result in the arbitrariness of the health concentration index's value. Makdissi and Yazbeck (2012) adopt a counting approach to overcome this problem. In this paper, we use this counting approach and decompose socioeconomic health inequality and achievement by categories of health problems and by region in the United States using the National Health Interview Survey 2010.