Income distribution, socioeconomic status, and self rated health in US

BMJ 1999;318:1417 ( 22 May )

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Income distribution, socioeconomic status, and self rated health in US

Authors ignored data in their study

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Authors ignored data in their study

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ I take issue with Kennedy et al's conclusion that the frequently observed association between income inequality andhealth is not an artefact of an omitted relation between individualincome and individual health.¹ They had only limited informationon individual incomes in their study. Furthermore, they ignoredsome of the income and inequality data that they did have available.Consequently, their conclusion that income inequality exerts anindependent effect on individual health isinappropriate.

The authors controlled for individual income by using survey data on household income and controlling for household size.Their income data were categorical and so were necessarily measuredwith error. The top category was for households with incomes of $>=$ $50 000 (17.3% of the sample). Without explanation the authorscombined this category with the category of households with anincome of $35 000 to <$50 000 (another 15% of the sample). Theauthors also retained observations on people . . . [Full text of this article]

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Income distribution, socioeconomic status, and self rated health in the United States: multilevel analysis: Bruce P Kennedy, Ichiro Kawachi, Roberta Glass, and Deborah Prothrow-Stith
BMJ 1998 317: 917-921. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]