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on Health Economics |
| By: | Aysit Tansel (Department of Economics, METU; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Bonn, Germany; Economic Research Forum (ERF) Cairo, Egypt); Deniz Karaoglan (Department of Economics, METU) |
| Abstract: | This is the first study which provides empirical analysis of the variation in health behaviors for adult men and women in Turkey which is a developing country. The health behaviors considered are smoking, drinking, fruit and vegetable consumption, exercise and body mass index (BMI). We find that in Turkey education is the most important factor that affects the health behaviors. The results indicate that smoking is positively associated with education at all levels with a decreasing effect with the level of education unlike in the developed countries. This result indicates that smoking is a serious public health problem in Turkey at all levels of education. Further, alcohol consumption and schooling are positively related and it increases by the level of education. Higher educated individuals clearly eat more fruits, vegetables and exercise more and their BMI levels are in the normal range compared to less educated and illiterate. We also highlight the importance of demographic factors, labor market status and household income. We use Health Survey of Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) for years 2008, 2010 and 2012. This study will provide a baseline for further studies on the various aspects of health behaviors in Turkey. |
| Keywords: | Health Behaviors, Education, Demographic Factors, Turkey. |
| JEL: | I10 I12 I19 |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:met:wpaper:1406&r=hea |
| By: | Paul Bingley; Nabanita Datta Gupta; Michael Jorgensen; Peder Pedersen |
| Abstract: | There are large differences in labor force participation rates by health status. We examine to what extent these differences are determined by the provisions of Disability Insurance and other pension programs. Using administrative data for Denmark we find that those in worse health and with less schooling are more likely to receive DI. The gradient of DI participation across health quintiles is almost twice as steep as for schooling – moving from having no high school diploma to college completion. Using an option value model that accounts for different pathways to retirement, applied to a period spanning a major pension reform, we find that pension program incentives in general are important determinants of retirement age. Individuals in poor health and with low schooling are significantly more responsive to economic incentives than those who are in better health and with more schooling. Similar gradients in outcomes and behavior by health and schooling partially reflects the less educated having poorer health on average, but also that the less educated have worse job prospects and higher replacement rates due to a progressive formula for DI and other pension benefits. |
| JEL: | H55 I1 J14 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20114&r=hea |
| By: | Harold L. Cole (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and NBER); Soojin Kim (Krannert School of Management, Department of Economics, Purdue University); Dirk Krueger (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, CEPR, CFS, NBER and Netspar) |
| Abstract: | This paper constructs a dynamic model of health insurance to evaluate the short- and long-run effects of policies that prevent firms from conditioning wages on health conditions of their workers, and that prevent health insurance companies from charging individuals with adverse health conditions higher insurance premia. Our study is motivated by recent US legislation that has tightened regulations on wage discrimination against workers with poorer health status (such as Americans with Disability Act of 1990, ADA, and its amendment in 2008, the ADAAA) and that prohibits health insurance companies from charging different premiums for workers of different health status starting in 2014 (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, PPACA). In the model, a trade-off arises between the static gains from better insurance against poor health induced by these policies and their adverse dynamic incentive effects on household efforts to lead a healthy life. Using household panel data from the PSID we estimate and calibrate the model and then use it to evaluate the static and dynamic consequences of no-wage discrimination and no-prior conditions laws for the evolution of the cross-sectional health and consumption distribution of a cohort of households, as well as ex-ante lifetime utility of a typical member of this cohort. In our quantitative analysis we find that although the competitive equilibrium features too little consumption insurance and a combination of both policies is effective in providing such insurance period by period, it is suboptimal to introduce both policies jointly since such a policy innovation severely undermines the incentives to lead healthier lives and thus induces a more rapid deterioration of the cohort health distribution over time. This effect more than offsets the static gains from better consumption insurance so that expected discounted lifetime utility is lower under both policies, relative to implementing wage nondiscrimination legislation alone. This is true despite the fact that both policy options are strongly welfare improving relative to the competitive equilibrium. |
| Keywords: | Health Risks, Social Insurance, Health Effort Choices |
| JEL: | E61 H31 I18 |
| Date: | 2014–04–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:14-023&r=hea |
| By: | Asongu, Simplice |
| Abstract: | Abstract Purpose – How do economic prosperity, health expenditure, savings, price-stability, demographic change, democracy, corruption-control, press-freedom, government effectiveness, human development, foreign-aid, physical security, trade openness and financial liberalization play-out in the fight against health-worker crisis when existing emigration levels matter? Despite the acute concern of health-worker crisis in Africa owing to emigration, lack of relevant data has made the subject matter empirically void over the last decades. Design/methodology/approach – A quantile regression approach is used to assess the determinants of health-worker emigration throughout the conditional distributions of health-worker emigration. This provides an assessment of the determinants when existing emigrations levels matter. Findings – Findings provide a broad range of tools for the fight against health-worker brain-drain. As a policy implication, blanket emigration-control policies are unlikely to succeed equally across countries with different levels of emigration. Thus to be effective, immigration policies should be contingent on the prevailing levels of the crisis and tailored differently across countries with the best and worst records on fighting health worker emigration. Originality/value – This paper has examined the theoretical postulations of a WHO report on determinants of health-worker migration. |
| Keywords: | Welfare; Health; Human Capital; Migration; Africa |
| JEL: | D60 F22 I10 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2013–09–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:56802&r=hea |