Relative index of inequality: definition, estimation and inference

Jamie Sergeant, University of Oxford and David Firth, University of Warwick

(Project no. 30026)

The request is not part of a substantive study, but a methodological one. The data are to be used for illustrative purposes only.

The relative index of inequality (RII) is used to compare rates of incidence, usually of death or disease, between those with highest and lowest socio-economic status. Work has been undertaken to develop a method of estimating the RII for a given dataset which the authors believe offers improvement over the standard technique widely used in health and social research. Mortality data from the LS are sought to provide a real life illustration of the new method and facilitate its comparison with other possible techniques of RII estimation.

Methodological advances always need to be tested with real data, and the impact of such advances is substantially enhanced if a real data application is published along with the methodological development. For our work on the RII, the requested data from the LS provide an ideal test bed and illustration of the new techniques. Only summary tables are needed, not individual-level data.