Inequality of opportunity in health: The gender dimension across European countries

The analysis of inequality of opportunity in health is based on the partition of health inequality within two types of causes: legitimate causes, which are individual responsibility and lifestyles choices, also called effort, and illegitimate causes, which are social and family background, also called circumstances. This research aims to look at inequality of opportunity in health according to gender. We use data collected from the Survey on Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe in 2017. These data provide us with information on people’s childhood background, such as parents’ health and financial situation as well as information on people’s current health- related behaviors. We use reduced-form models and estimations to predict self-assessed health, evaluate the magnitude of health inequality in Europe by gender and measure the importance of inequality of opportunity and inequality related to effort in health inequality. Results show differences in health inequality between males and females and in-between countries. Inequality of opportunity in health is lower among females than males in countries with a globally high level of inequality of opportunity in health while it is the opposite in countries with a low level of inequality of opportunity in health. Health inequality related to effort is higher for females than males in most countries. Globally, overall health inequality is mostly explained for both genders by inequality of opportunity in health rather than health inequality related to effort. Countries should invest in priority in policies to improve childhood socio-economic and health background in order to reach equality of opportunity in health across gender.