Socioeconomic gradients in self-rated health: a developing country case study of Enugu State, Nigeria

The use of self-rated health (SRH) as an indicator of health has generally been limited to the study of socioeconomic inequalities in industrialized societies. We evaluate the potential usefulness of this indicator in a developing country context using a data set generated from Enugu State, Nigeria, which includes information on SRH and health status index (HSI). We also evaluate the difference in the estimated socioeconomic inequality in health using two specifications of the concentration index: the standard specification and Erreygers (J Health Econ, 28:504–515, 2009a) specification. The results show that self rated health is a potentially useful indicator of health state for populations in developing countries. Our tentative results indicates that the Erreygers (J Health Econ 28:521–524, 2009b) specification of the concentration index detects larger levels of inequality than the standard specification, and thus raises questions for researchers who use results obtained from the instrument for policy advice. The simulation results also show that the level of social aversion to socio-economic differences among people would generally increase the perceived level of health inequality in a population.