Impact of choice of living standard indicators on the equality index of health and health service utilization / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

Objective:To evaluate outcomes and differences of the equality indexes of health and health service utilization in different living standard indicators. Methods: Using multi-phase stratified random sampling to select samples of rural families in Ningxia region and collect data about sample families' income, consumption, wealth and some relevant data on family members' health status and health services utilization. Using concentration index to measure the equality of health and health services utilization with income, consumption or wealth index as living standard indicators respectively and discuss the differences of the outcomes. Results:For different living standard in-dicators, the correlation between each other was weak. The differences of concentration indexes with different living standard indicators between 0. 01 to 0. 21 , and most of whichweresignificant on the level of 0. 05. Conclusion: The impact of choice of living standard indicators on the equality index of health and health service utilization was signifi-cant. In a limited area, living standards measured by wealth index could be more accurate and objective than by in-come or consumption, but the condition of this method wasmore strict.