American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
"Too Young to Die": Deprivation Measures Combining Poverty and Premature Mortality
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
(pp. 226–57)
Abstract
Most measures of deprivation concentrate on deprivation among the living population and, thus, ignore premature mortality. This omission leads to a severe bias in the evaluation of deprivation. We propose two different measures that combine information on poverty and premature mortality of a population. These measures are consistent and satisfy a number of desirable properties unmet by all other measures combining early mortality and poverty. Moreover, one measure is readily computable with available data and easily interpretable. We show that omitting premature mortality leads to an underestimation of total deprivation in 2015 of at least 36 percent at the world level.Citation
Baland, Jean-Marie, Guilhem Cassan, and Benoit Decerf. 2021. ""Too Young to Die": Deprivation Measures Combining Poverty and Premature Mortality." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 13 (4): 226–57. DOI: 10.1257/app.20200122Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C43 Index Numbers and Aggregation; leading indicators
- I12 Health Behavior
- I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
- N33 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
- N34 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: 1913-
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration