This paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of inequality and inequity in the delivery of health care based on contributions from the literature on poverty and deprivation. This approach has some appealing characteristics: 1) inequity is additively decomposable by population subgroups;...

Measuring the performance of health systems has become a key tool in aiding decision makers to describe, analyze, compare and ultimately improve the delivery and outcomes achieved by a system. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) framework for assessing performance includes three intrinsic...

This paper analyses the role of health on exits out of and entries into employment using data from the first twelve waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991-2002). We use discretetime duration models to estimate the effect of health on the hazard of becoming non-employed and on the...

This paper presents an overview of microsimulation as a method to evaluate health and health care policies and interventions. After presenting a brief survey of microsimulation models and applications we describe the main features of the approach and how these are implemented in practice. We pay...

We consider the effects of contractual and working conditions on self-assessed health and psychological well-being using twelve waves (1991/92 – 2002/2003) of the British Household Panel Survey. While one branch of the literature suggests that “atypical” contractual conditions have a...

Both health and income inequalities have been shown to be much greater in Britain than in Germany. One of the main reasons seems to be the difference in the relative position of the retired, who, in Britain, are much more concentrated in the lower income groups. Inequality analysis reveals that...

International comparison of performance has become an influential lever for change in the provision of public services. For health care, patients’ views and opinions are increasingly being recognized as legitimate means for assessing the provision of services, to stimulate quality...

The World Health Report 2000 proposed three fundamental goals for health systems encompassing population health, health care finance and health systems responsiveness. Each of the goals incorporates both an efficiency and equity dimension. While inequalities in population health and health care...

This paper investigates the influence of aggregate country-level characteristics on health system responsiveness, using data on 62 countries present in the World Health Survey. While evidence exists on variations in reported levels of health system responsiveness across countries, the literature...

This paper evaluates the impact of smoking bans on smoking using a policy change introduced by the UK government. We present a theoretical model of smoking that defines an individual’s life-cycle addiction and cigarette consumption in the presence and in the absence of a public smoking...