Analysing the relationship between income inequality and health in China

This study tests the association between income inequality and individual's health, anassociation known as the Income Inequality Hypothesis (IIH) for China using theCHNS dataset. We adopt a dynamic approach to account for lagged effects of inequalityon health outcomes using objective measures of health: nurse-collected health measuresand blood-based biomarkers. Using a balanced panel data across 24 years from Chinawe employ pooled OLS and fixed effects regression models controlling for individuallevel variables, county/city fixed effects, and year dummies. We find current inequalitylevel not to be associated with health outcomes as reported in a recent empirical studyby Bakkeli (2016). However considering a dynamic framework, we find laggedinequality level to have a statistical significantly associate with certain health outcomesafter accounting for a host of demographic factors. Our analysis identifies theassociation between lagged inequality and health outcomes and the need for policymakers to account for the dynamic association between inequality and health outcomes.