Cahiers de la Chaire Santé Inequality of Opportunity in Health and the Principle of Natural Reward : evidence from European Countries (original) (raw)

This paper aims to quantify and compare inequalities of opportunity in health across European countries considering two alternative normative ways of treating the correlation between effort, as measured by lifestyles, and circumstances, as measured by parental and childhood characteristics, championed by Brian Barry and John Roemer. This study relies on regression analysis and proposed several measures of inequality of opportunities. Data from the Retrospective Survey of SHARELIFE, which focuses on life histories of European people aged 50 and over, are used. In Europe at the whole, inequalities in opportunities stand for almost 50% of the health inequality due to circumstances and efforts in Barry scenario and 57.5% in Roemer scenario. The comparison of the magnitude of inequalities of opportunity in health across European countries shows considerable inequalities in Austria, France, Spain, Germany, whereas Sweden, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland present the lowest...

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