Health Equity

Health differs between socioeconomic groups throughout the world. Our research measures the magnitudes of these health disparities, unravels their causes, and evaluates the impact of policies on them. Furthermore, we elicit people’s aversion to health inequalities and use these social preferences to conduct equity-sensitive evaluation of health policies.

Our research

Measurement

• Poor Health Reporting? Using Anchoring Vignettes to Uncover Health Disparities by Wealth and Race. Demography 2018, 55(5): 1935-1956. Rossouw L, Bago d'Uva T.M., van Doorslaer E.K.A.
• Conindex: Estimation of concentration indices. The Stata Journal 2016, 16(1): 112-138.O’Donnell O, O’Neill S, Van Ourti T, Walsh B
• An experimental test of the concentration index. Journal of health Economics 2012, 31(1): 86-98. Bleichrodt H, Rohde K, Van Ourti T.
• Measuring socioeconomic inequality in health, health care and health financing by means of rank-dependent indices: a recipe for good practice. Journal of Health Economics 2011, 30(4): 685-694. Erreygers G, Van Ourti.

Evidence

• Tenand, M., Bakx, P., & van Doorslaer, E. (2020). Eligibility or use? Disentangling the sources of horizontal inequity in home care receipt in the Netherlands. Health economics, 29(10), 1161-1179.
• Equal long-term care for equal needs with universal and comprehensive coverage? An assessment using Dutch administrative data. Health Economics, 2020;29:435–451 Tenand, M, P Bakx and van Doorslaer E.K.A.
• Thanks goodness for stickiness. Unravelling the evolution of income-related health inequalities before and after the Great recession in Europe. Journal of Health Economics 2020, 70: 102259. Coveney M, Garcia Gomez P, Van Doorslaer E, Van Ourti.
• Persisting inequalities in birth outcomes related to neighbourhood deprivation. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2020, 74: 232-239. Bertens L, Burgos Ochoa L, Van Ourti T, Steegers E, Been J.
• Explaining the fall of socioeconomic inequality in childhood stunting in Indonesia. SSM - Population Health 2019, 9:100469. Fikru Rizal M, van Doorslaer E.K.A.
• The rise and fall of mortality inequality in South Africa in the HIV era. SSM - Population Health 2018, 5: 239-248. Haal K, Smith A, van Doorslaer E.K.A.
• Inequalities in use of secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease by socioeconomic status: evidence from the PURE study, an observational study. The Lancet Global Health 2018, 6: e292-e301. Murphy A, Palafox B, O’Donnell O et al.
• Inequity in the face of death. Health Economics 2015, 24(10): 1348-1367. Garcia Gomez P, Schokkaert E, Van Ourti T, Bago d’Uva T (2015).

Evaluation

• Dominance analysis and rank-dependent equity weights. In: Cookson R., Griffin S., Norheim O., Culyer A.J. (eds.), Distributional cost-effectiveness analysis: Quantifying Health Equity Impacts and Trade-Offs, Oxford University Press. 2020. O’Donnell O, Van Ourti T.
• Effect of screening mammography on breast-cancer mortality: Quasi-experimental evidence from rollout of the Dutch population-based program with 17-year follow-up of a cohort. International Journal of Cancer 2020, 146(8): 2201-2208. Van Ourti T, O’Donnell O, Koc H, Fracheboud J, de Koning H.
• Universal health coverage: A (social insurance) job half done? World Development 2019, 113: 246-258. Neelsen S, Limwattananon S, O’Donnell O, van Doorslaer E.
• Impact and spill-over effects of an asset transfer program on child undernutrition: Evidence from a randomized control trial in Bangladesh. Journal of Health Economics 2018, 62: 105-120. Raza W, Van de Poel E, Van Ourti T
• Progressive Universalism? The Impact of Targeted Coverage on Healthcare Access and Expenditures in Peru. Health Economics 2017, 26: e178-e203. Neelsen S, O’Donnell O.

Our collaborations

We are a leading partner of Smarter Choices for Better Health, a multi-disciplinary research collaboration between the Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management, the Erasmus Medical Centre and the Erasmus School of Economics.

Our teaching

• MSc Health, Economics, Policy and Law and MSc Health Economics
• PhD level short courses on health inequality: Tinbergen Institute and Swiss School of Public Health