Socio-Economic Inequalities in Health

Abstract-This paper offers a critical appraisal of the various methods employed to date to measure inequalities in health. It suggests that only two of these--the slope index of inequality and the concentration index-are likely to present an accurate picture of socioeconomic inequalities in health. The paper also presents everal empirical examples lo illustrate of the dangers of using other measures uch as the range, the Lorenz curve and the index of dissimilarity. Key words-inequalities in health, social class, comparative research, mortality, morbidity I