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

[摘要] BackgroundAfter 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.MethodsThis 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.ResultsOur 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.ConclusionsImproving 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.

[发布日期] 2015-12-22

[关键词] Health inequality;Equity;Decomposition analysis;Urban and rural disparity;Mongolia