Health inequality in America

At CIESS facilities is taking place the working meeting of the PAHO “health inequality studies”. This interesting project aims to develop standarized papers for several countries of the regions regarding measurement of health inequality and its determinants, following the well known concentration indexes and its decomposition. Results for Chile suggest that while access to dentists and specialist is pro rich, emergency room and inpatient days are pro poor. The decomposition showed that income and regional dummies explained an important share of the inequality. For Mexico, it is found that high-income population have better health and receives more care compared to low income population. The factors that explains the inequality are living standard and education and health insurance status. In case of Peru, health status is pro Rich as well to access to hospital care, while primary care is pro poor.. Main contributions to inequality are per capita expenditure and health insurance.