published in: Social Science & Medicine, 2020, 259, 112829
There is a presumption that when an individual's comparison of his income with the incomes of others in his comparison group yields an unfavorable outcome, the individual is dismayed and experiences stress that impinges negatively on his health. In a recent study, Hounkpatin et al. (2016) conduct an inquiry aimed at deciphering which measure of low relative income reflects better the adverse psychosocial effect of low relative income on health. Hounkpatin et al. pit against each other two indices that they characterize as "competing:" the "relative deprivation (Yitzhaki Index)" of individual i, RDi ; and the "income rank position" of individual i, Ri . In this Rejoinder we show that because a measure of rank is embodied in the RDi index and the Ri index can be elicited from the RDi index, these two indices need not be viewed as competing. Furthermore, we formulate a composite measure of relative deprivation, CRDi , which can be used to assess more fully the psychosocial effect of individual i's low relative income on his health.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.