The Evolution of Income-related Health Inequalities in Switzerland Over Time

This article presents new evidence on income-related healthinequality and its development over time in Switzerland. Weemploy the methods lined out in Van Doorslaer and Jones (2003,"Inequalities in self-reported health: validation of a new approachto measurement", Journal of Health Economics 22(1), 61–78)and Van Doorslaer and Koolman (2004, "Explaining the differencesin income-related health inequalities across European Countries",Health Economics 22(7), 609–628) measuring health usingan interval regression approach to compute concentration indicesand decomposing inequality into its determining factors. Nationallyrepresentative survey data for 1982, 1992, 1997, and 2002 areused to carry out the analysis. Looking at each of the fouryears separately the results indicates the usual positive relationshipbetween income and health, but the distribution is among theleast unequal in Europe. No clear trend emerges in the evolutionof the inequality indices over the two decades. A small butsignificant increase over the first 15 years is followed bystabilization if not a slight decrease in total income-relatedhealth inequality. The most important contributors to healthinequality are income, education and activity status, in particular,retirement. Regional differences including the widely varyinghealth care supply, in contrast, do not exert any systematicinfluence. (JEL codes: D32, I10, I12)