Working Paper: NBER ID: w9738
Authors: Sherry Glied; Adriana Lleras-Muney
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that health inequalities across socio-economic groups in the US are large and have been growing. We hypothesize that, as in other, non-health contexts, this pattern occurs because more educated people are better able than to take advantage of technological advances in medicine than are the less educated. We test this hypothesis by relating education gradients in mortality with measures medical innovation. We focus on overall mortality and cancer mortality, examining both the incidence of cancer and survival conditional on disease incidence. We find evidence supporting the hypothesis that education gradients are steeper for diseases with more innovation.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: I12; I20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Education (I29) | Health Outcomes (I14) |
| Higher Education (I23) | Better Utilization of Health Technologies (I10) |
| Technological Advances in Medicine (O33) | Education Gradients in Health Outcomes (I24) |
| Rate of Technological Change (O33) | Education Gradient in Health (I14) |
| Educational Attainment (I21) | Rate of Adoption of New Treatment Technologies (O33) |
| Education Gradients (I24) | Changes in Survival Rates (C41) |
| Education Gradients (I24) | Number of Drugs Approved (L65) |