Title

Income inequality and mortality in U.S. cities: Weighing the evidence. A response to Ash

Author(s)

Angus Deaton Angus Deaton (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Darren Lubotsky Darren Lubotsky (Princeton University)

Abstract

Deaton and Lubotsky (2003) found that the robust positive relationship across American cities between mortality and income inequality became small, insignificant, and/or non-robust once they controlled for the fraction of each city's population that is black. Ash and Robinson (Ash, M., & Robinson D. Inequality, race, and mortality in US cities: a political and econometric review. Social Science and Medicine, 2009) consider alternative weighting schemes and show that in one of our specifications, in one data period, and with one of their alternative weighting schemes, income inequality is estimated to be a risk factor. All of our other specifications, as well as their own preferred specification, replicate our original result, which is supported by the weight of the evidence. Conditional on fraction black, there is no evidence for an effect of income inequality on mortality.

Creation Date

2009-04

Section URL ID

CHWB

Paper Number

69

URL

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwjFN4HbBrDBTEJGNEpOS3RFaGM/view

File Function

Jel

I000, D190, J110, J130, D130

Keyword(s)

Inequality, Race, Health inequality, Mortality, Geography, USA

Suppress

false

Series

9