BACKGROUND The decline in global and between-country health inequality is a major challenge to overcome. However, few studies have systematically investigated the relationship between inequality of health stock and national wealth. From an economic perspective, health can be viewed as a durable capital stock that produces an output of healthy time. Therefore, in this paper, we focused on health capital to investigate the relationship between inequalities of national health and national wealth. METHODS Based on health stock data from 1990 to 2015 for 140 countries, we estimated Gini coefficients of health stock to investigate associations with a well-known economic flow indicator, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), stock-based national wealth indicator, Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI), and firm-level net income. RESULTS The estimated Gini coefficient of global health stock shows that health stock has experienced a global decline. The Gini coefficient for low-income countries (LICs) showed the fastest decline in health stock, dropping from 0.69 to 0.66 in 25 years. Next, rapid population growth and the rise in the youth share of the working-age population in LICs were most likely contributing factors to the decline in inequality. Most countries that experienced positive health stock growth also indicated a strong positive relationship with GDP and IWI. However, some countries showed a negative relationship with natural capital, which is a part of IWI. In addition, firm-level net income showed no obvious associations with health stock, GDP and IWI. CONCLUSIONS We argue that a negative relationship between health stock and natural capital is a sign of unstable development because sustainable development involves maintaining not only GDP but also IWI, as it is a collective set of assets or wealth comprising human, produced and natural capital. Moreover, in our analysis of firm-level income data, we also discuss that income will be influenced by other factors, such as innovations, human resources, organization culture and strategy. Therefore, the paper concludes that health stock is a vital component in measuring health inequality and health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, IWI is more comprehensive in measuring national wealth and can complement GDP in measuring progress toward sustainable development.

中文翻译：

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健康存量的不平等及其与国民财富的关系。


背景技术 全球和国家间健康不平等的缩小是一个需要克服的重大挑战。然而，很少有研究系统地探讨健康存量不平等与国民财富之间的关系。从经济角度来看，健康可以被视为一种持久的资本存量，可以产生健康时间的产出。因此，本文主要以健康资本为研究对象，探讨国民健康不平等与国民财富之间的关系。方法 基于140个国家1990年至2015年的健康存量数据，估算健康存量的基尼系数，以考察其与著名的经济流量指标国内生产总值（GDP）、基于股票的国民财富指标、包容性财富指数的关系。 （IWI）和公司净收入。结果 全球健康存量基尼系数估算表明，全球健康存量出现下降。低收入国家 (LIC) 的基尼系数显示健康存量下降最快，25 年来从 0.69 降至 0.66。其次，低收入国家人口的快速增长和青年人在劳动年龄人口中所占比例的上升很可能是不平等现象减少的因素。大多数健康存量正增长的国家也表明与 GDP 和 IWI 存在很强的正相关关系。然而，一些国家与自然资本呈现负相关关系，而自然资本是IWI的一部分。此外，企业层面的净利润与健康存量、GDP 和 IWI 没有明显的关联。 结论 我们认为，健康存量与自然资本之间的负相关关系是不稳定发展的标志，因为可持续发展不仅涉及维持 GDP，还涉及维持 IWI，因为它是由人力、生产资本和自然资本组成的资产或财富的集合。此外，在我们对企业层面收入数据的分析中，我们还讨论了收入会受到其他因素的影响，例如创新、人力资源、组织文化和战略。因此，本文得出的结论是，健康存量是衡量健康不平等和与健康相关的可持续发展目标（SDG）的重要组成部分。因此，IWI在衡量国民财富方面更加全面，并且可以在衡量可持续发展进展方面补充GDP。