World Health Report 2000: inequality index and socioeconomic inequalities in mortality

Monitoring of inequality in health has become an increasingly important tas k of development agencies. We compared the inequality index as published in the World Health Report 2000 with available evidence on socioeconomic ineq ualities in mortality in 15 industrialised and 43 less-developed countries. We found that the World Health Report index does not correspond with inter national variations in the size of socioeconomic inequalities in mortality. These findings indicate that the index should not be interpreted as a refl ection of socioeconomic inequalities in health, nor should the index be use d to replace the indices developed to monitor socioeconomic inequalities in health.