Does Inequality Have Momentum? The Implications of Convex Inequality Regimes for Mortality Dynamics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4119632
AutoresArun S Hendi (0000-0001-8763-5874, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume50
Fascículo4
Páginas1209-1237
Data de publicação2024-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPopulation and Development Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0098-7921 • E-ISSN: 1728-4457
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/padr.12649
OpenAlexW4400474286
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas31

For decades, educational inequalities in mortality have widened and mortality among the least educated has stalled, even as overall mortality has improved, and an increasing proportion of young people have completed secondary and tertiary education. While researchers recognize that these trends are in part related to changing selection into education groups, there has been no unifying framework for understanding why the trends may be related. This article provides a unifying framework by introducing a concept called the "convex inequality regime," a diminishing returns relationship between relative education and mortality. In populations where convex inequality regimes prevail, even without any changes in the institutions governing inequality or any changes in overall mortality conditions, education transitions result in an increase in mortality for the less educated and an increase in mortality inequality between education groups. The model also shows that lifespan variation increases for lower education groups because convex inequality regimes tend to increase relative mortality more rapidly at younger ages during an education transition. Even after an education transition is complete, inequality between education groups will continue to increase for decades due to the momentum of inequality, a cohort replacement phenomenon where younger more unequal cohorts replace older more equal cohorts

Cohort effect · Demographic economics · Economics · Educational inequality · Inequality · Momentum (technical analysis · Mortality rate · Population · Social inequality · Sociology · Demography · Global Health Care Issues · Health disparities and outcomes · Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management · Mathematics