THREE ESSAYS ON HEALTH AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS

Qingqing Yang

Abstract by Qingqing Yang, Ph.D. Washington State University June 2018 Chair: Robert E. Rosenman This dissertation consists of three independent papers on how socioeconomic conditions affect human beings’ health and health-related decision making. Attentions are paid not only to adults’ health, but also children’s health status. The first paper assesses how socioeconomic conditions affect self-assessed health (SAH) and objective measure of health. A random-effects generalized ordered probit model is used to test for heterogeneity by socioeconomic status. The results show that individuals with high income relative to a comparison group are more likely to report good health; but they are not more likely to report extremely good health. These socioeconomic variables do not significantly affect an objective measure of health. The second paper shows how the Kuznets Curve, which demonstrates the relationship between economic development and income inequality, can also be used to show the relationship between income and health (what we refer to as the “Health Kuznets Curve”). Previous studies have shown that as income increases health improves in both individual and aggregate. Our study introduces a more complex picture by showing that this positive correlation reverses when inequality increases theoretically and empirically using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The result shows that an HKC exist in societies with all levels of income distribution; social health increases with economic development initially, and then decreases. However, the health turning point comes earlier in societies with less equal income distributions. The third paper aims to estimates the relationship between livestock ownership, livestock health, and children’s malnutrition status. Using a two-step model with data from the Tanzania National Panel Survey, we find that livestock health is linked to children’s health in two ways. First, livestock disease influences children’s weight-for-age-z-score (WAZ) and height-for-age-z-score (HAZ) indirectly, with a lag effect, through nutrition intake related to animal source food (ASF). Second, households that reported livestock with diseases were more likely to have children with lower WAZ and HAZ. Although a high ratio of livestock with diseases reduces nutrition intake for children, this negative effect might be offset by the greater value of a larger flock or herd size.

THREE ESSAYS ON HEALTH AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS

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