EuHEA Seminar - Cristina Elisa Orso (University of Verona)

Cristina Elisa Orso

Abstract

This paper explores the evolution of inequality of opportunity in the incidence of chronic diseases along the life-cycle and across different birth cohorts for individuals aged 50 or older and living in 14 European countries. We adopt an ex-ante parametric approach and rely on the dissimilarity index as our reference inequality metric. In addition to commonly used set of circumstances, we pay particular attention to the role of adverse early life conditions, such as the experienced harm episodes and the quality of the relationship with parents. In order to quantify the relative importance of each circumstance we apply the Shapley inequality decomposition method. Our results suggest that inequality of opportunity in health is not stable over the life-cycle - it is generally higher at younger ages. Moreover, it varies between different birth cohorts - it results generally higher for younger individuals than for older age groups. Finally, the contribution of adverse early life conditions ranges between 25% and 35%, which is significantly higher than the relative contribution of other demographic and socio-economic circumstances.

Speaker: Cristina Elisa Orso (University of Verona)

Discussant: Pedro Rosa Dias (Imperial College London)

Chair: Rossella Verzulli (University of Bologna)