Absolute Income, Relative Income, Income Inequality and

We test whether mortality is related to individual income, mean community income, and community income inequality, controlling for initial health status and personal characteristics. The analysis is based on a random sample from the adult Swedish population of over 40,000 individuals who were followed up for 10-17 years. We find that mortality decreases significantly as individual income increases. For mean community income and community income inequality we cannot, however, reject the null hypothesis of no effect on mortality. This result is stable with respect to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in an extensive sensitivity analysis. Ulf-G Gerdtham, Department of Community Medicine, Lund University, Malmö University Hospital, SE-205 02 Malmö, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]. Magnus Johannesson, Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, SE-113 83, E-mail: [email protected]. We thank Björn Lindgren, Katarina Steen Carlsson and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning XX through XX from Ulf-G Gerdtham at the above address. Gerdtham and Johannesson 2