The Impact of Income Inequality on Mortality: A Replication Study of Leigh and Jencks (Journal of Health Economics, 2007)

Abstract

This study replicates “Leigh A., & Jencks C. (2007). Inequality and mortality: Long-run evidence from a panel of countries. Journal of Health Economics, 26(1), 1–24” study of the relationship between income inequality and mortality. L&J find no evidence that income inequality is related to country-level mortality. Their analysis is based on two-way fixed effects specifications applied to a panel of 12 countries over periods ending in 2003. After reconstructing L&J’s data from original sources, I am able to closely reproduce their findings. When I use superior inequality data and extend L&J’s data to an additional 11 countries and 15 years, I confirm their results. When I use multiple imputation to increase the sample to full size, I again do not find a significant relationship between income inequality and mortality. As a result, I conclude that my replication exercise confirms L&J’s results. The new analysis provides consistent evidence for the view that income inequality is not significantly related to mortality.

Keywords

• income inequality
• health
• mortality
• multiple imputation
• i12
• n30