Ex-post Inequality of Opportunity in Health among the Elderly People in China:New Evidence from Three Theories on Equal Opportunity
Using pooled data from the 2011 to 2018 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)as well as 2014 CHARLS Life History Survey,we employ the concepts of equality of opportunity of Barry,Roemer,and Swift to analyze inequality in health among older adults and the relative contributions of circumstance,effort and demographic factors to explaining health inequality.We further track the changes in health inequality and relative contributions of three sets of variables.The results show that the explained inequalities in health have no significant differences under the three normative views,as does the share of health inequalities explained by each source.The contribution of circumstances to overall inequality in health appears to be much larger than the contribution of efforts and demographics,and the correlation between efforts and circumstances is weak.From 2011-2018,overall inequalities in health among older adults decrease,and the contribution of circumstances to inequality in allostatic load increases from 2011-2015.Regions of birth,childhood health and nutrition conditions as well as household socioeconomic status are the three most important circumstance factors.Sleeping and alcohol consumption are the two most important effort factors.Thus,improving conditions in childhood and health-related behaviours in later life are both effective for reducing health inequalities among older adults.
Inequality of Opportunity in HealthShapley-value DecompositionAllostatic LoadSelf-rated Health
万方数据
