A Resource-Sensitive Framework for Defining and Measuring Equality of Opportunity in Health Care
Skype: school.socialsciences
3 PM, Seminar Room, Department of Economics and Management
Speaker: Sergio Beraldo, University of Naples Federico II
Abstract
We offer a new framework for defining and measuring disparities in the distribution of health care opportunities. These are conceived as inversely related to the cost of access to a specified bundle of health services of given quality, computed by monetizing all the concrete impediments that must be overcome to get access. In the ex-ante perspective we adopt, what is salient is the distribution of costs across cells, where each cell is defined by a set of characteristics determining access barriers. Differently from the existing health literature, our approach allows to disentangle the opportunities individuals enjoy from the mere utilization of health services.
Accordingly, an inequality health-opportunities index is proposed and resource-conditional policy suggestions are deducted.
A simple empirical test based on Italian data shows how our methodology can be applied to measure disparities in health care opportunities both across regions and over time.
