Myra Yazbeck

Peer Effects, Fast Food Consumption and Adolescent Weight Gain

This paper aims at opening the black box of peer effects in adolescent weight gain. Using Add Health data on secondary schools in the U.S., we investigate whether these effects partly flow through the eating habits channel. Adolescents are assumed to interact through a friendship social network. We propose a two-equation model. The first equation provides a social interaction model of fast food consumption. To estimate this equation we use a quasi maximum likelihood approach that allows us to control for common environment at the network level and to solve the simultaneity (reflection) problem. Our second equation is a panel dynamic weight production function relating an individuals Body Mass Index z-score (zBMI) to his fast food consumption and his lagged zBMI, and allowing for irregular intervals in the data. Results show that there are positive but small peer effects in fast food consumption among adolescents belonging to a same friendship school network. Based on our preferred specification, the estimated social multiplier is 1.15. Our results also suggest that, in the long run, an extra day of weekly fast food restaurant visits increases zBMI by 4.45% when ignoring peer effects and by 5.11%, when they are taken into account.

Measuring socioeconomic health inequalities in presence of multiple categorical information.

While many of the measurement approaches in health inequality measurement assume the existence of a ratio-scale variable, most of the health information available in population surveys is given in the form of categorical variables. Therefore, the well-known inequality indices may not always be readily applicable to measure health inequality as it may result in the arbitrariness of the health concentration indexs value. In this paper, we address this problem by changing the dimension in which the categorical information is used. We therefore exploit the multi-dimensionality of this information, define a new ratio-scale health status variable and develop positional stochastic dominance conditions that can be implemented in a context of categorical variables. We also propose a parametric class of population health and socioeconomic health inequality indices. Finally we provide a twofold empirical illustration using the Joint Canada/United States Surveys of Health 2004 and the National Health Interview Survey 2010.

Equivalence scales and housing deprivation orderings: an example using Lebanese data

Housing deprivation orderings raise challenges as far as measurement is concerned. The first challenge resides in the identification of an adequate variable that characterizes housing services consumed by households. Another challenge may arise in the comparisons of housing services consumption between households of different sizes and composition. The last challenge may arise in the choice of a deprivation threshold and of a deprivation index. In this article we address those challenges theoretically. An empirical illustration is offered using Lebanese data.

Avoiding Blindness to Health Status in Health Achievement and Health Inequality Measurement

The concentration index, being focused on the socioeconomic dimension of health inequality and overlooking aversion to pure health inequality, can produce ethically contestable rankings of health distributions. A health transfer from a sicker but richer individual to healthier but poorer individual will decrease the concentration index. This paper presents a new class of health inequality indices that avoid this limitation by trading off socioeconomic-related health inequality against pure health inequality.

Robust rankings of socioeconomic health inequality using a categorical variable

When assessing socioeconomic health inequalities, researchers often draw upon measures of income inequality that were developed for ratio scale variables. As a result, the use of categorical data (such as self-reported health status) produces rankings that may be arbitrary and contingent to the numerical scale adopted. In this paper, we develop a method that overcomes this issue by providing conditions for which these rankings are invariant to the numerical scale chosen by the researcher. In doing so, we draw on the insight provided by Allison and Foster (2004) and extend their method to the dimension of socioeconomic inequality by exploiting the properties of rank-dependent indices such as Wagstaff (2002) achievement and extended concentration indices. We also provide an empirical illustration using the National Institute of Health Survey 2012.

Income-Related Health Transfers Principles and Orderings of Joint Distributions of Income and Health

The objective of this article is to provide the analyst with the necessary tools that allow for a robust ordering of joint distributions of health and income. We contribute to the literature on the measurement and inference of socioeconomic health inequality in three distinct but complementary ways. First, we provide a formalization of the socioeconomic health inequality-specific ethical principle introduced by Erreygers et al. (2012) . Second, we propose new graphical tools and dominance tests for the identification of robust orderings of joint distributions of income and health associated with this new ethical principle. Finally, based on both pro-poor and pro-extreme ranks ethical principles we address a very important aspect of dominance literature: the inference. To illustrate the empirical relevance of the proposed approach, we compare joint distributions of income and a health-related behavior in the United States in 1997 and 2014.

Assessing the redistributive impact of higher education tuition fees reforms: the case of Québec

In this article, we analyse the redistributive impact of a recent reform of tuition fees in Québec. We adapt Duclos et al.’s (2005) methodology to a generalized Lorenz framework. Many policy analysts argued that maintaining low higher education tuition fees is regressive. We take a look at the empirical validity of this argument using data from Statistics Canadas Survey of Labor and Income Dynamics. We show the importance of using data to validate this argument. The results obtained allow for the conclusion that this redistributive argument is empirically not verified for the province of Québec.

A Framework for Testing the Equality Between the Health Concentration Curve and the 45-Degree Line

The health concentration curve is the standard graphical tool to depict socioeconomic health inequality in the literature on health inequality. This paper shows that testing for the absence of socioeconomic health inequality is equivalent to testing if the conditional expectation of health on income is a constant function that is equal to average health status. In consequence, any test for parametric specification of a regression function can be used to test for the absence of socioeconomic health inequality (subject to regularity conditions). Furthermore, this paper illustrates how to test for this equality using a test for parametric regression functional form and applies it to health-related behaviors from the National Health Survey 2014.

A Fuzzy Approach to the Measurement of Leakages for North American Health Systems

This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients’ leakages in the Canadian and the U.S. health care systems. Leakages are defined in terms of individuals who are in bad health and could not have access to health care when needed. To carry his comparison we rely on the assumption that Canada is a strong counterfactual for the U.S. We first develop a class of fuzzy leakages indices and incorporate them in a stochastic dominance framework to derive the dominance criterion. We then use the derived criterion to perform inter-country comparisons on the global level. To provide more insight, we decompose the analysis with respect to gender, ethnicity, income and education. Intra-country comparisons reveal the presence of income based leakage inequalities in both countries yet, gender, ethnic and education based disparities appear to be present in the U.S. only. As for inter-country comparisons, results are in general consistent with the hypothesis that leakages are less important under the Canadian health care system.

Equivalence Scales and Housing Deprivation Orderings: An Example Using Lebanese Data

Housing deprivation orderings raise challenges as far as measurement is concerned. The first challenge resides in the identification of an adequate variable that characterizes housing services consumed by households. Another challenge may arise in the comparisons of housing services consumption between households of different sizes and composition. The last challenge may arise in the choice of a deprivation threshold and of a deprivation index. In this article we address those challenges theoretically. An empirical illustration is offered using Lebanese data.