Reference Health and the Demand for Medical Care

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9708577
AutoresMatthew Harris (0000-0002-8201-5817, autor de correspondencia), Matthew C Harris (0000-0002-8097-984X, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, autor de correspondencia), Jennifer L Kohn (Drew University)
Año2018
Volumen128
Número615
Páginas2812-2842
Fecha de publicación2018-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/ecoj.12554
OpenAlexW2553179419
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas45

We propose that health in prior periods, termed reference health, is theoretically and empirically relevant to the demand for medical care. To address non‐normality in the distributions of medical care spending, consumption, and health, we use a conditional density estimator nested in a finite mixture framework. We find that reference health can help explain the variation in spending among individuals with the same contemporaneous health, particularly in the top tail of the spending distribution. We demonstrate that omitting reference health understates the potential cost‐savings of healthy aging initiatives by 50

Consumption (sociology · Distribution (mathematics · Econometrics · Economic growth · Economics · Estimator · Health care · Medical care · Normality · Public economics · Social science · Sociology · Statistics · Variation (astronomy · Global Health Care Issues · Health disparities and outcomes · Healthcare Policy and Management · Mathematics · Medicine · Nursing