TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glied,Sherry
AU  - Lleras-Muney,Adriana
TI  - Health Inequality, Education and Medical Innovation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9738
PY  - 2003
Y2  - June 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9738
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9738.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Sherry A. Glied
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University
Department of Health Policy and Management
600 West 168th Street, Room 610
New York, NY 10032
Tel: 212/305-0299
Fax: 212/305-3405
E-Mail: sag1@columbia.edu

Adriana Lleras-Muney
Department of Economics
9373 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Tel: 310/825-3925
Fax: NA
E-Mail: alleras@ECON.UCLA.EDU
AB  - Recent studies suggest that health inequalities across socio-economic groups in the US are large and have been growing. We hypothesize that, as in other, non-health contexts, this pattern occurs because more educated people are better able than to take advantage of technological advances in medicine than are the less educated. We test this hypothesis by relating education gradients in mortality with measures medical innovation. We focus on overall mortality and cancer mortality, examining both the incidence of cancer and survival conditional on disease incidence. We find evidence supporting the hypothesis that education gradients are steeper for diseases with more innovation.
ER  -