Volume 37, Number 3 (Summer) 2002
Mellor, Jennifer M. and Jeffrey Milyo. 2002. "Income Inequality and Health Status in the United States: Evidence from the Current Population Survey." Journal of Human Resources 37(3):510-539.
Several recent studies have identified an association between income in- equality and aggregate health outcomes; this has been taken to be evidence that inequality is detrimental to individual health. We use data from the 1995-99 March Current Population Survey to examine the effect of income inequality on individual health status for both the general population and those individuals in poverty. We find no consistent association between income inequality and individual health status. Our results contradict recent claims that the psychosocial effects of income inequality have dramatic consequences for individual health outcomes.
Jennifer Mellor is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the College of William and Mary, and Jeff Milyo is an assistant professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. The authors are grateful for financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Program. They received helpful comments from Tony Blakely, Tom Downes, Ingrid Ellen, Bill Evans, Rob Fleck, Vivian Ho, Christopher Jencks, Pete Klenow, Helen Levy, Ellen Meara, Anne Piehl, Mark Schlesinger, Joel Waldfogel, and Jeff Zabel. Seminar participants at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, and NBER, and two anonymous reviewers provided many useful suggestions and insights. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning November 2002 through October 2005 from Jennifer Mellor, Department of Economics, P.O. Box 8795, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X