ArticleBMJ global health2023
Income inequality and its association with COVID-19 cases and deaths: a cross-country analysis in the Eastern Mediterranean region.
Article in BMJ global health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pre-COVID era pediatric disease incidence in Kazakhstan: regional panel data analysis of multiple disease groups (2010-2019).Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Unravelling demographic and socioeconomic patterns of COVID-19 death and other causes of death: results of an individual-level analysis of exhaustive cause of death data in Belgium, 2020.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2024Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
introductionThere is limited evidence on the associations between economic and social disparities in the Eastern Mediterranean region (EMR) with COVID-19 infections and deaths. This study aims to investigate the relationship between income inequalities using Gini coefficients and COVID-19 cases and deaths per million population in the EMR countries.
methodsCountry-level data on monthly COVID-19 cases and deaths between March 2020 and October 2021, along with data on selected confounders, were collected from publicly available databases. Mixed-effect negative binomial and inverse hyperbolic sine transformation regressions were estimated to examine the association.
resultsThe study showed that, in the EMR, a unit increase in Gini coefficient is associated with approximately 7.2% and 3.9% increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths per million population, respectively. The magnitude and direction of the association between income inequality and COVID-19 cases and deaths per-million population still remain the same after excluding four warzone countries from the analysis.
conclusionThis increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths is underpinned by the fact that a large number of the population in the region is living in conditions of poverty, with inadequate housing, comorbidities and limited or virtually no access to essential healthcare services. Healthcare policy-makers across countries in the region need to implement effective interventions in areas of income inequality, where it may be linked to increasing the risk of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
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