On measurement and interpretation of health inequalities an application in indian context

Abstract

Increasing global evidence on health inequalities across various socioeconomic groups is a major concern among the international development community and has prompted many of the national and sub-national governments to incorporate reduction of health inequalities as one of the key policy objectives. However, to proceed with their intent, these interventions require considerable information on the magnitude and varied dimensions of health deprivation. In this regard, quantitative estimates of the newlinemagnitude, direction, and rate of change of health inequalities play a crucial role in newlinecreating and assessing policies aimed at eliminating such misfortune. Measurement of health inequality has two fundamental objectives; one, to compare the distribution of the health status of individuals within a well-defined socioeconomic group; and two, comparison of distribution of different socioeconomic groups. It must be noted that most of the available measures of health inequality provide different estimates when we assess inequalities in terms of attainment (for example, institutional delivery) and shortfall (for example, non-institutional delivery). If we perceive that these are two different types of inequalities then, their relationship in terms of estimates and directionality may be allowed to vary. However, an attainment distribution is also newlinethe flip side of a shortfall distribution, and vice versa. In view of such issues, it is newlineimportant that we present estimates of health inequality which is sensitive to such concerns and are based on robust measurement techniques. A related issue here is to newlineexamine whether the levels of health inequality respond to the level of the phenomenon or are a consequence of the adopted social and economic policies.