nep-hea New Economics Papers
on Health Economics
Issue of 2005‒12‒01
seven papers chosen by
Yong Yin
SUNY at Buffalo, USA

  1. CHILDREN IN BRAZIL: HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WORK By Carine Milcent; Jack Huguenin; Danielle Carusi-Machado
  2. Inactivity Among Prime Age Men in the UK By Giulia Faggio; Stephen Nickell
  3. The demand for health insurance in a multirisk context By Mohamed Anouar Razgallah
  4. Nash Consistent Representation of Effectivity Functions through Lottery Models By Bezalel Peleg; Hans Peters
  5. Health Determinants in Urban China By Zhong Zhao
  6. Taxes, Cigarette Consumption and Smoking Intensity By Jérôme Adda; Francesca Cornaglia
  7. Health and Heterogeneity By Victor Rios-Rull; Josep Pijoan-Mas

  1. By: Carine Milcent; Jack Huguenin; Danielle Carusi-Machado
    Abstract: In Brazil, even though school participation is compulsory for children between 7 to 14 years old, some of them are not enrolled in the education system. One of the main reasons is their participation to the work market that may have an impact on their health. Moreover, child's school attendance in public schools usually insures a meal to child but for children working, they have to accumulate two journeys: school and job. So, child's health could be explained by both, school attendance and work market participation. In addition, problems related to school attendance and school progress could be related to child work or his health. Therefore, we cannot explore determinants of one of these components school attendance, health and child work without studying their interactions. In this paper, we use the database Living Standards Measurement Study Survey 1996/1997 (Pesquisa de Padrões de Vida - PPV) to look at this interactions. It appears that child's labor and school attendance have a very strong correlation. School attendance has a negative impact in child's probability to participate in labor market. For instance, child ´s labor market affects negatively child ´s probability to evaluate his health as good and excellent. We also note that school attendance does not have a significant impact in child ´s health evaluation. The main conclusion of our article is that the development of human capital should consider together health and education. A policy focusing only in education, as incentives to go to school, does not seem to be sufficient to improve child's health. Also, government should also consider the population at risk, as children from poor families, living in worse conditions and obliged to work.
    JEL: I12 J13 J18 J24
    Date: 2005
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:173&r=hea
  2. By: Giulia Faggio; Stephen Nickell
    Abstract: Inactivity rates among prime-age men in the UK have risen by at least five times since theearly 1970s whereas unemployment rates are much the same. Furthermore, inactivity isstrongly concentrated among the unskilled and those suffering from a limiting long-termillness or disability. In our analysis of inactivity rates by region and age group we find thatmale inactivity responds negatively to variations in the wages of low level occupations andpositively to fluctuations in incapacity benefit.
    Keywords: inactivity, disability
    JEL: J60
    Date: 2005–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0673&r=hea
  3. By: Mohamed Anouar Razgallah (GATE CNRS)
    Abstract: Using a model of bivariate decision under risk, we analyse the health insurance demand when there are two sources of risk: a health risk and an uninsurable one. We examine how the uninsurable risk affects the coverage of the health risk. We show that the determinants of the demand for health insurance are not only the correlation between the health and uninsurable risks as shown by Doherty and Schlesinger (1983a) and the variation of the marginal utility of wealth with respect to the health status (Rey, 2003) but also the way in which the occurrence of the uninsurable risk affects the marginal utility of wealth.
    Keywords: Correlated risks, Health insurance, State-dependent utility
    JEL: D81 I11 I18
    Date: 2005–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:0504&r=hea
  4. By: Bezalel Peleg; Hans Peters
    Abstract: Effectivity functions for finitely many players and alternatives are considered. It is shown that every monotonic and superadditive effectivity function can be augmented with equal chance lotteries to a finite lottery model - i.e., an effectivity function that preserves the original effectivity in terms of supports of lotteries - which has a Nash consistent representation. In other words, there exists a finite game form which represents the lottery model and which has a Nash equilibrium for any profile of utility functions, where lotteries are evaluated by their expected utility. No additional condition on the original effectivity function is needed.
    Date: 2005–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:huj:dispap:dp404&r=hea
  5. By: Zhong Zhao (IZA Bonn and CCER, Peking University)
    Abstract: This paper identifies health determinants in urban China applying Grossman model. Using wave of China Health and Nutrition Survey in 2000, we find that education has important positive effect on health, and cost of health care services has significantly negative impact. However, effects of wage rate and household income are insignificant. We also find that region is an important determinant of health. The body weight is also important, but unlike finding in developed countries, under-weight instead of over-weight is a better predictor for poor health. Our results suggest that male has better health than female does, and married couple has better health in urban China.
    Keywords: self-reported health status, Grossman model, ordered probit, China
    JEL: I12 J24 D12
    Date: 2005–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1835&r=hea
  6. By: Jérôme Adda (University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Francesca Cornaglia (University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies and IZA Bonn)
    Abstract: This paper analyses the compensatory behavior of smokers. Exploiting data on cotinine concentration - a metabolite of nicotine - measured in a large population of smokers over time, we show that smokers compensate tax hikes by extracting more nicotine per cigarette. Our study makes two important contributions. First, as smoking more intensively a given cigarette is detrimental to health, our results question the usefulness of tax increases. Second, we develop a model of rational addiction where agents can also adjust their intensity of smoking and we show that the previous empirical results suffer from severe estimation biases.
    Keywords: taxes, smoking, cigarettes, addiction
    JEL: I1
    Date: 2005–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1849&r=hea
  7. By: Victor Rios-Rull; Josep Pijoan-Mas
    Keywords: Heterogeneity, Health Status, Health Related Behavior, Human Capital
    JEL: I12 D31
    Date: 2005
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:644&r=hea

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