Economic Inequality and its Impact on Health

In this paper I considered the influence of economic inequality on the population health. The review of relevant literature showed that results of the researches that pursue the similar goal are ambiguous and depend on the how the inequality and health are interpreted, and what are the supposed mediating factors of the relationship between them. In my research I used three indicators of population health: the number of deaths from noncommunicable diseases per 1000 people, death rate per 1000 people and life expectancy. The Gini coefficient reflected the inequality and the mediating factors of choice were health expenditures (private, or public, or total) and the number of physicians per 1000 people. This was a cross-country analysis, in which I used the OLS method – one of the most common in the relevant literature. The modifications I applied to the model were, firstly, using such control variables as level of corruption in the country and the level of access to clean water source and improved sanitation facilities and, secondly, the choice of the dependent variable: along with two health outcomes, which are commonly considered in the relevant literature, I also used a variable, which is used much more rarely – the rate of deaths caused by noncommunicable diseases. The results of the analysis showed that the impact of inequality on health was significant in all three cases (in two cases with the sign opposite to the expected one) as well as the impact of the number of physicians was significant in two of three cases.