Measuring health gaps between the rich and the poor: a review of the literature and its implications for health research in Africa


Submitted: 15 December 2011
Accepted: 25 April 2013
Published: 2 July 2013
Abstract Views: 1660
PDF: 762
HTML: 2780
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

  • Amson Sibanda United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social and Policy Development, New York, United States.
  • Henry V. Doctor Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Population and Family Health, New York, United States.
Measuring variations and gaps in health and wellbeing across individuals, social groups and societies is a critical issue confronting social scientists in their quest to explain why gaps in health between the rich and the poor persist within and across societies. This article provides a systematic review of the measurement of inequalities and their implications on rural and remote health. A comprehensive literature review was conducted using online databases and other collections of published research on measuring health gaps between the rich and the poor in order to trace the development of this field of inquiry. Despite the enormous information on the subject area, it is not always easy to disentangle the independent effects of social class or socio-economic status (SES) on health inequalities from genetic or biological differences when analyzing racial/ethnic, gender or age gaps in mortality and morbidity. The meaning of SES or social class also varies from one culture to the other. Despite decades of work in this field, it is not clear what it is about SES or social class that is associated with inequalities in health. Is it simply a question of access to resources? And on the issue of measurement, studies from various disciplines have shown that it is important to employ a raft of measures in order to measure and present the distributions fully from various angles and value judgments. In the rural African context, tackling vertical and horizontal inequalities in health requires tackling the root causes of poverty and promoting social policies that empower individuals and communities. Hence, the review discusses recent methodological developments that hold promise for addressing the knowledge gap that remain. We hope that researchers will reflect on the dynamics in measures of inequalities discussed in this paper as they continue to assess the status of health in Africa’s contemporary and largely dominated rural population.

Amson Sibanda, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social and Policy Development, New York
Social Affairs Officer
Henry V. Doctor, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Population and Family Health, New York
Associate Research Scientist

Supporting Agencies

African Census Analysis Project

Sibanda, A., & Doctor, H. V. (2013). Measuring health gaps between the rich and the poor: a review of the literature and its implications for health research in Africa. Journal of Public Health in Africa, 4(1), e3. https://doi.org/10.4081/jphia.2013.e3

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations