Income inequality and Health: Evidence from Swedish municipalities and counties

Sammanfattning: Income inequality has been rising across the globe, including Scandinavia.The argument has been made that income inequality could have negative health effects,however the evidence is still inconclusive. In this thesis I analyse the link betweenincome inequality and health outcomes in Sweden. I use Swedish register data to run afixed effects regression on the municipal and county level. Income inequality isinstrumented with a shift-share Bartik-like instrument to address endogeneity issues.The results show no statistically significant effect of income inequality on the sickness absence rate or the acute myocardial infarction incidence rate.