| By: |
Juergen Jung (Department of Economics, Towson University);
Jialu Liu (Department of Economics, Allegheny College) |
| Abstract: |
We make use of panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey between
1991 and 2006 to investigate whether health insurance increases out-of-pocket
(OOP) health expenditure risk. We find that health insurance increases the
probability of catastrophic OOP health expenditures using a series of Probit
models. We then use two-part as well as sample selection models to account for
selection on unobservable variables and find that although the probability of
positive OOP health expenditures increases with the availability of health
insurance, the actual level of OOP health expenditures decreases. More
specifically, we find that for a per- son with positive OOP health
expenditures, having health insurance reduces the level of OOP expenses by
12.56 percent while controlling for selection effects. |
| Keywords: |
health insurance, exposure to health risk, health care in China, out-of-pocket health expenditure in China, two-part model, bivariate sample selection model, Heckman two- step estimator, China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). |
| JEL: |
I11 C33 C34 |
| Date: |
2011–04 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tow:wpaper:2011-04&r=mfd |