Gerdtham, Ulf-G., and Magnus Johannesson. 2004. "Absolute Income, Relative Income, Income Inequality, and Mortality." Journal of Human Resources 39(1): 228-248.

We test whether mortality is related to individual income, mean community income, and community income inequality, controlling for initial health status and personal characteristics. The analysis is based on a random sample from the adult Swedish population of more than 40,000 individuals who were followed up for 10-17 years. We find that mortality decreases significantly as individual income increases. For mean community income and community income inequality we cannot, however, reject the null hypothesis of no effect on mortality. This result is stable with respect to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in an extensive sensitivity analysis.

Ulf-G Gerdtham is a professor of Community Medicine at Lund University, Sweden. Magnus Johannesson is a professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. The authors thank Björn Lindgren, Katarina Steen Carlsson, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning August 2004 through July 2007 from Ulf-G Gerdtham, Department of Community Medicine, Lund University, Malmö University Hospital, SE-205 02 Malmö, Sweden. E-mail: ulf.gerdtham@ smi.mas.lu.se.