Elsevier

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 63, Issue 10, November 2006, Pages 2562-2574
Social Science & Medicine

For whom is income inequality most harmful? A multi-level analysis of income inequality and mortality in Norway

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.06.002Get rights and content

Abstract

This study investigates the degree to which contextual income inequality in economic regions in Norway affected mortality during the 1990s, above the effects of mean regional income and individual-level confounders. A further objective is to explore whether income inequality effects on mortality differed between socioeconomic groups. Data were constructed by linkages of administrative registers encompassing all Norwegian inhabitants. The outcome variable was all-cause mortality during 6 years (i.e., died 1994–1999 or alive end of 1999). Men and women aged 25–66 in 1993 were analysed. Regions’ mean income and income inequality (in terms of gini coefficients) were calculated from consumption-units-adjusted family disposable income. Individual-level variables included sex, age, marital status, individual income, education, and being a recipient of health-related welfare benefits. Multilevel logistic regression models were fitted for 2,197,231 individuals nested within 88 regions. After adjusting for regional mean income and individual-level variables, the odds ratio (OR) for mortality 1994–1999 was 1.028 (95% CI 1.023–1.033) on the gini variable multiplied by 100. Analyses of cross-level interactions indicated some, albeit modest, income inequality effects on mortality in the upper income and educational categories. Among those with low individual income, low education, and among recipients of health-related welfare benefits, mortality effects of higher regional income inequality were significantly stronger than among those more advantageously placed in the social structure. The results of this study differ from previous studies which have suggested that contextual income inequality has a minor impact on population health in egalitarian countries. The results indicate that in Norway, neither a comparatively egalitarian income distribution nor generous and comprehensive welfare institutions hindered the emergence of regional-level income inequality effects on mortality, and these effects were particularly marked among socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Explanations for the results are discussed.

Introduction

The relationship between inequalities in income distribution and health outcomes has been explored for almost 30 years. Rodgers (1979) was probably the first to empirically assess the hypothesis that there was a relationship between country-level income inequality and population health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy. Several others addressed the topic during the 1980s (e.g., Flegg, 1982; Legrand, 1987; Wilkinson, 1986), and research proliferated in the 1990s. Studies from a growing number of countries and sites have addressed the question whether or not income inequality in a society is associated with population health, over and above the effects of average income and individual-level health predictors. Recent reviews (Deaton, 2003; Lynch et al., 2004; Macinko, Shi, Starfield, & Wulu, 2003; Subramanian & Kawachi, 2004; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2006) demonstrate that numerous studies have found associations between income inequality and health outcomes such as all-cause mortality, cause-specific mortality, and self-perceived health, but there are also many unsupportive findings and a number of issues are unresolved.

In regards to methodology, however, there seems to be a consensus that the question ideally should be addressed by simultaneously analysing individual and contextual variables by means of multilevel statistical techniques. Most studies to date have analysed data aggregated to the level of counties, states, or countries. Among the nearly 170 studies reviewed by Wilkinson and Pickett (2006), less than a third had a multilevel design. Results from aggregate-level studies are not necessarily misleading, but the ecological approach does not allow for disentangling the effects of individual-level characteristics such as education and individual income from what is at the centre of interest, namely the contextual effect of income inequality on health outcomes (Lynch et al., 2004; Subramanian & Kawachi, 2004; Wagstaff & van Doorslaer, 2000).

In regards to other issues, questions remain. One issue is the prevalence of the association: does it appear only under certain circumstances or only within particular national contexts? Within USA, both aggregate-level (e.g. Kaplan, Pamuk, Lynch, Cohen, & Balfour, 1996; Kawachi & Kennedy, 1997) and multilevel studies (e.g., Kennedy, Kawachi, Glass, & Prothrow-Stith, 1998; Subramanian, Blakely, & Kawachi, 2003; Subramanian & Kawachi, 2006) have reported findings in line with the hypothesis, contrary to studies in for instance Canada (Ross et al., 2000), New Zealand (Blakely, Atkinson, & O’Dea, 2003), and Japan (Shibuya, Hashimoto, & Yano, 2002). This has been interpreted as indication that the association is only present in inegalitarian countries such as USA (or Chile, see Subramanian, Delgado, Jadue, Vega, & Kawachi, 2003) where income and other social resources such as access to health care are comparatively unequally distributed (Lynch et al., 2004; Subramanian & Kawachi, 2004). Findings from the Nordic countries seem to agree with this proposition. In the Nordic countries, there are comprehensive welfare states and relatively egalitarian income distributions (Fritzell & Lundberg, 2005; Lynch et al., 2004), and neither studies from Denmark (Osler et al., 2002), Sweden (Gerdtham & Johannesson, 2004; Ross et al., 2005), nor Finland (Blomgren, Martikainen, Makela, & Valkonen, 2004; Martikainen, Maki, & Blomgren, 2004), have detected significant associations between income inequality and health.

Another issue is what the appropriate geographic units are for demonstrating associations between area-level income inequality and health outcomes. Wilkinson and Pickett (2006) have strongly argued that the hypothesis cannot be properly tested when income inequality is measured in relatively small areas, because such communities are too small to reflect the scale of social class differences in a society. They substantiate this by showing that a clear majority of studies at the level of countries, US states, and larger regions, corroborate with the hypothesis, while studies at the level of for instance counties or parishes often produce unsupportive results.

A third issue is whether contextual income inequality affects the health of different population subgroups in similar ways. Those relatively few studies which have addressed this topic are mainly from USA, and results are inconsistent. Some suggest that the rich have better health when living in more inegalitarian areas (e.g., Kahn, Wise, Kennedy, & Kawachi, 2000; Subramanian, Kawachi, & Kennedy, 2001), while others find more detrimental health effects of income inequality among those with below-medium or low income (e.g., Kennedy et al., 1998; Lochner, Pamuk, Makuc, Kennedy, & Kawachi, 2001). A recently published US study found few signs of different effects of state income inequality on self-rated health among various population subgroups, and the small observed associations implied more adverse effects of income inequality for relatively advantaged socioeconomic groups (Subramanian & Kawachi, 2006). However, a recent Italian study of mortality, using aggregate-level data, found that the negative effects of higher income inequality occurred primarily in low-income provinces, suggesting that income inequality was more detrimental for disadvantaged population categories (Materia et al., 2005).

Section snippets

Purpose and design of the present study

These issues are addressed by the present study, which analyses register-based population data from Norway by means of multilevel statistical techniques. Norway can be classified as a social-democratic welfare state with a fairly egalitarian social structure (Kautto, Heikkilä, Hvinden, Marklund, & Ploug, 1999), and evidence from this country can be particularly interesting in view of the claim that income inequality effects primarily emerge in societies with relatively inegalitarian income

Data and the classification of regions

The database “FD-Trygd” used for these analyses was constructed by Statistics Norway by linkages of various administrative registers (Akselsen, Dahl, Lajord, & Sivertstøl, 2000). The database includes all inhabitants in Norway registered at 1 January 1993. Data from the population register have been linked to the taxation authority's income register, Statistics Norway's educational register, and other administrative registers, by means of the personal identification number. Also, vital

Results

Model 2 (Table 2) shows that when adjusting for sex and age, the inclusion of the region-level variables adds significantly to the fit of the model, compared to Model 1 (−2LL improvement=12.9, DF=2). The risk of mortality was significantly reduced with higher mean income in the regions, and there was moreover a clear association between higher income inequality and higher mortality (OR=1.034, 95% CI=1.030–1.038) in Model 2. Model 3 includes the full set of individual-level mortality predictors,

Main results

The results of these analyses indicate that when area-level income inequality is calculated with respect to Norwegian economic regions, there was a marked tendency during the 1990s that overall mortality increased with higher regional income inequality. These results were obtained in multilevel analyses after adjustment for region-level mean income and various individual-level mortality predictors. The income inequality effect was higher when adjustment was made only for sex and age than when

Conclusion

This study indicates that when contextual income inequality is measured at the level of Norwegian economic regions, higher levels of regional income inequality were associated with higher mortality, and this was most marked among those located in disadvantaged social positions. These results deviate from the prevailing view that contextual income inequality is unrelated to population health in comparatively egalitarian countries. They suggest that in Norway, neither a fairly egalitarian social

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Norwegian Social Science Data Services for their assistance in providing data from the database “FD trygd”. Neither Norwegian Social Science Data Services nor Statistics Norway are responsible for the analysis or for the interpretations provided in the paper. The paper is part of the project “Income Inequalities and Mortality”, which was funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

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