Investigating the Relationship of Socio-economic Index and Resource Availability Index with the Inequality of Daly in the Provinces of Iran

In order to have more effective programs and social interventions controlling the burden of diseases, it is necessary for policy makers to have valid evidence about the role of socioeconomic determinants. The present study aimed to provide empirical evidence about the relationship of socioeconomic inequalities and the availability of resources with the burden of diseases among the provinces of the country in 2019.

This descriptive and analytical research was carried out using the provincial data of 2019. The required provincial data were extracted from the Statistical Yearbook Report and the Household Income Expenditure Report of the Statistics Center and the data related to adjusted years with disability and early death (DALI) from the 2019 disease burden estimates. DALY's inequality was investigated by estimating the concentration index and extracting the concentration curve at a 95% confidence interval. The analyses were carried out in the Stata software (version 15).

In 2019, the average per capita DALY was 18.33±3.98. The average socio-economic index and resource availability index for 31 provinces were obtained at 0.37±0.21 and 0.64±0.20, respectively. Considering the difference in the available resources (covariate), there was a statistically significant difference between the socio-economic quartiles in terms of the distribution of per capita DALY (P<0.01). Therefore, the effect size of belonging to the socio-economic quartile was 0.758 (P<0.01). Nonetheless, the effect size of the difference in resource availability was not statistically significant.

Health policymakers at national and provincial levels should try to reduce inequality by promoting programs to encourage healthy lifestyles, developing universal access to early screening services, and preventing the causes of death.