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International Journal for Equity in Health
Published in: International Journal for Equity in Health 1/2015

Open Access 01-12-2015 | Research

Explaining differences in education-related inequalities in health between urban and rural areas in Mongolia

Authors: Javkhlanbayar Dorjdagva, Enkhjargal Batbaatar, Bayarsaikhan Dorjsuren, Jussi Kauhanen

Published in: International Journal for Equity in Health | Issue 1/2015

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Abstract

Background

After the socioeconomic transition in 1990, Mongolia has been experiencing demographic and epidemiologic transitions; however, there is lack of evidence on socioeconomic-related inequality in health across the country. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the education-related inequalities in adult population health in urban and rural areas of Mongolia in 2007/2008.

Methods

This paper used a nationwide cross-sectional data, the Household Socio-Economic Survey 2007/2008, collected by the National Statistical Office. We employed the Erreygers’ concentration index to assess the degree of education-related inequality in adult health in urban and rural areas.

Results

Our results suggest that a lower education level was associated with poor self-reported health. The concentration indices of physical limitation and chronic disease were significantly less than zero in both areas. On the other hand, ill-health was concentrated among the less educated groups.
The decomposition results show education, economic activity status and income were the main contributors to education-related inequalities in physical limitation and chronic disease removing age-sex related contributions.

Conclusions

Improving accessibility and quality of education, especially for the lower socioeconomic groups may reduce socioeconomic-related inequality in health in both rural and urban areas of Mongolia.
Footnotes
1
The following are the desirable four properties of the rank-dependent indices: “i) transfer – a small transfer of health from a richer (poorer) to a poorer (richer) individual translates into a pro-poor (pro-rich) change in the index; ii) mirror – the inequality indices of health and ill-health are mirror images of each other; that is, I(h) is equal to the absolute value of I(1 − h), but has the opposite sign; iii) level independence - an equal increment of health for all individuals does not affect the index; that is, the index is invariant to scalar addition even when the bounds of the variable are kept constant; iv) cardinal invariance – a linear transformation of the health variable, h i , does not affect the value of the index; that is, the measured degree of inequalities is the same, irrespective of the cardinal scale of the health variable (e.g. I(h) of body temperature would be the same whether measured in Celsius or Fahrenheit)” [24].
 
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Metadata
Title
Explaining differences in education-related inequalities in health between urban and rural areas in Mongolia
Authors
Javkhlanbayar Dorjdagva
Enkhjargal Batbaatar
Bayarsaikhan Dorjsuren
Jussi Kauhanen
Publication date
01-12-2015
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
International Journal for Equity in Health / Issue 1/2015
Electronic ISSN: 1475-9276
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-015-0281-9

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