Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study

HIAS-E-31

The Health Equivalent Adjusted Level (HEAL):
Taking an Ordinal Approach to the Measurement of a Society’s Health Achievements

Abstract:

This paper, following earlier work on the cardinal measurement of ordinal health inequality, proposes an axiomatic derivation of the health achievement in a population when only ordinal information on health is available. An empirical illustration based on EU data for 27 countries during the period 2005-2012 is then presented which confirms the usefulness of the new measure of health achievement that has been introduced.

Report No.: HIAS-E-31
Author(s): Jacques Silber(a), (b)
Yongsheng Xu(c)
Affiliation: (a) Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
(b) LISER, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
(c) Department of Economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, United States
Issued Date: August 2016
Keywords: axiomatic approach, European Union, health achievement, ordinal information
JEL: I14, I31
Links: PDF, HERMES-IR, RePEc