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Health Selection vs. Causation in the Income Gradient: What Can We Learn from Graphical Trends?
- Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 19, Number 2, May 2008
- pp. 574-579
- 10.1353/hpu.0.0018
- Article
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Income produces health, and sickness negatively affects earnings. These two factors likely explain the income gradient in health, but each has very different policy implications. In this paper, I examine graphical trends in mortality risk between low-income and higher-income people by age and gender. These trends suggest that forward causality (income affecting health) is more important than reverse causality (health affecting income) in the income-health gradient. However, there is some evidence to suggest that reverse causality plays an important role for younger men.