Health Inequalities Among Retirees in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, life expectancy has continued to rise over the last two decades and the distribution of the age of death has narrowed, which suggests a decrease in health inequality. For the same period, however, the income-mortality gradient has increased, which suggests that the health gains have been unequally distributed across the income distribution. We examine the latter suggestion using data for the Netherlands of the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Our empirical findings show no significant changes in income-based physical and mental health inequalities during the last two decades. Arguably, larger samples, such as administrative data which is often used to analyze the income-mortality gradient, are needed to investigate in more detail the evolution of physical and mental health inequalities before drawing firm conclusions.