Health Inequality

However important income inequality is, it is only a partial representation of the inequality in well-being among individuals, households, counties, and other communities. At a minimum, we need to consider other crucial measures such as consumption, leisure, and health. The reason for looking at other measures is that the inequality in income per se might not translate directly into a deeper and more important concept of inequality in welfare terms. For example, Jones and Klenow state that if we were to look at GDP only, France’s living standards would be only about 60 percent those of the United States. However, once we factor in leisure and life expectancy, that figure gets closer to 85 percent, a substantial change. In essence, monetary income, and therefore income inequality, is only a part of what individuals and countries value. We apply exactly this concept to highlight the substantial amount of health inequality across counties in the United States.