Effect of the income distribution on the health condition of individuals

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between individual health status and income distribution in Brazil. Specifically, we are interested in evaluating how income distribution impacts individual self-reported health status. The methodology used in this work is the logit multilevel model. Our database is PNAD (National Household Survey) 1993 and PNADs 1998 and 2003, wich present a special survey about health status and other related subjects. Our main findings suggest that income distribution affects individual self-reported health status, although the magnitude of this effect is small: the higher is tends to be income inequality, the worse individual health status.