Region of Residence and Equality of Opportunity in Health: a Note on the Italian Case

The Italian health care system is managed mainly at the regional level. For this reason health care may diff er depending on region of residence. The aim of this note is to take a rigorous ex-ante approach and test for equality of health opportunities as opposed to health outcomes, which are the ex-post results. We perform non-parametric tests to evaluate if the probability of reaching the same health status di ffers by region of residence, after controlling for other influential factors such as age, gender and income. The results underline that the geographical distribution of opportunities in health is unequal, and therefore, that regional differences in outcomes are more likely to be expected.