There is a unique threshold age separating early deaths from late deaths such that averting an early death decreases life disparity, but averting a late death increases inequality in lifespans.

This article is concerned with sensitivity analysis of life disparity with respect to changes in mortality rates. A relationship is derived that describes the effect on life disparity caused by a perturbation of the force of mortality. Recently Zhang and Vaupel introduced a "threshold age",...

This study examines trends in socioeconomic-related inequalities in obesity risk among Canadian adults (aged 18–65 years) from 2000 to 2010 using five nationally representative Canadian Community Health Surveys (CCHSs). We employed the concentration index (C) to quantify the socioeconomic...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629611000427">'Journal of Health Economics'</A>, 30(4), 685-94.<p>The tools to be used and other choices to be made when measuring socioeconomic inequalities with rank-dependent inequality indices have recently been debated in this journal. This paper adds to this debate...</p></a>

The Health Concentration Index is a frequently used indicator for the measurement of the socioeconomic inequality of health. This note starts from a discussion of some of the weaknesses of this index. It then presents two possible alternative measures. The first is an adaptation of the...

In recent years attention has been drawn to several shortcomings of the Concentration Index, a frequently used indicator of the socioeconomic inequality of health. Some modifications have been suggested, but these are only partial remedies. This paper proposes a corrected version of the...

The origin of the obesity epidemic in developing countries is still poorly understood. It has been prominently argued that economic development provides a natural interpretation of the growth in obesity. This paper tests the main aggregated predictions of the theoretical framework to analyze...