Health Inequality of Opportunity: A Non-Parametric Approach Analysis

Abstract

The objective of this research is to measure and compare the importance of the contribution of inequality of opportunity in child health inequality. The latter is decomposed into within opportunity inequality and the between opportunity inequality using a non-parametric approach after building groups with deducted circumstance variables. The results showed that the total health inequality experienced a decrease between 1998 and 2013 from 0.65 to 0.26 in 15 years unlike the inequality of opportunities which has increased. It goes from 0.14 to 0.18 respectively in 1998 and 2013. The relatively low levels of inequality of opportunity are interpreted as an estimate of the lower bound of the set of variables of circumstances that can influence child health. Considering the results, the increase in the level of inequality of health opportunity would come more from the increase of the "unfavorable opportunity" group's contribution.