Refining Population Health Comparisons: A Multidimensional First Order Dominance Approach

How to determine if a population group has better overall (multidimensional) health status than another is a central question in the health and social sciences. We apply a multidimensional first order dominance concept that does not rely on assumptions about the relative importance of each dimension or the complementarity/substitutability across dimensions. In particular, we suggest that one can explore the “depth” of dominances by sequentially refining the health dimensions to see which dominances persist. Using The Danish National Health Interview Survey, we conduct dominance comparisons between population groups based on education, gender, marital status, and ethnicity for given age intervals. Our empirical illustration shows that it is possible to operationalize and meaningfully apply the multidimensional first order dominance concept with sequential refinements of health status to as much as ten health dimensions.