M. C. Majo, A. van Soest APPLIED ECONOMETRICS ПРИКЛАДНАЯ ЭКОНОМЕТРИКА № 4 (28) 2012 M. C. Majo, A. van Soest Income and health care utilization among the 50+ in Europe and the US1 This study addresses the question how income affects health care utilization by the population aged 50 and over in the United States and a number of European countries with varying health care systems. <...> The probabilities that individuals receive several medical services (visits to general practitioner, specialist, dentist, inpatient, or outpatient services) are analyzed separately using probit models. <...> In addition to controls for income and demographic characteristics, controls for health status (both subjective and objective measures of health) are used. <...> We analyze how the relationship between income and health care utilization varies across countries and relate these cross country differences to characteristics of the health care system, i. e., per capita total and public expenditure on health care, gate-keeping for specialist care, and copayments. <...> Introduction E nsuring socio-economic equity and reactivity of health care systems is often considered a high priority in health care policy (Van Doorslaer et al., 2006). <...> In the UK for example, equitable access to health care is an explicit goal of government policy (Deaton, 2002). <...> The ministers of health from Chile, Germany, Greece, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, and the UK have formed an international forum on matters relating to access to health care services, to sustain the goal of equitable access to good quality health care (Oliver, Mossialos, 2008). <...> Policy makers should have insight in the inequality changing effects of various health care systems, as lack of access and quality may cause or reinforce the positive association between socio-economic status (SES) and health, the so-called SES gradient in health (Deaton, 2002). <...> In this study we compare the relationship between SES and health care utilization, exploiting the large cross-country variation in health care systems to analyze which policies are effective to make the utilization of health care more equitable. <...> We mainly use income as our measure of SES because it is relatively easy to report for most individuals and easier to compare across countries <...>