Journal of Health & Medical Economics

Description

We use a slight increase in early social distancing to measure the social benefit of preventing COVID-19 deaths. In the early stages of the pandemic; we take advantage of rainfall at the county level on the weekend before the state lockdown. Current rainfall is a plausible exogenous instrument for social distancing after controlling for historical rainfall, temperature, and state fixed-effects. Within two weeks, a one percent drops in the number of people leaving their homes on the weekend prior to lockdown results in an average benefit of 132 dollars per county resident. The reduction in the likelihood of a major outbreak, which results in a significant but unevenly distributed social benefit, is primarily responsible for the compounding effects of earlier distance over time. Hospitals are paid by fixed prices in many nations that are determined by the diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) of patients. Average and heterogeneous elasticities of quantities (number of admissions) and quality-related outcomes serve as the units by which we measure the effects of price and income changes on the entire range of hospital services. We use data on over 160 million hospital admissions, which represent the entire universe of hospital admissions in Germany between 2005 and 2016, for our empirical analysis. Instruments that take advantage of a two-year lag in regulatory price setting are the foundation of our identification strategy. A placebo test can be used to demonstrate that our instruments do not have significant anticipatory direct effects because of the strategy. The income elasticity is negative (0.15), while the compensated own-price elasticity of quantity is positive (0.2).

Educational Outcomes

In the end, costs rise as a result of both the mechanical increase and a behavioral response to larger quantities as prices rise. Using a large longitudinal dataset of Danish children, this study investigates how a severe health shock to the parents affects the educational outcomes of their children. We measure the magnitude of the health shock by employing cancer-specific survival rates and coarsened exact matching to control for potential endogeneity between the health of the parents and their children's school performance. Children's basic school grades and their likelihood of beginning and finishing secondary education are all negatively impacted, albeit modestly, by a health shock to their parents, particularly in the case of cancers with poor prognoses. The ill parent's age, gender, and gender of the children all have different outcomes, but family-related resilience factors like parental education level have no effect. Non-monetary rather than monetary costs appear to be the source of the effects. In addition, we discover that for both survivors and non-survivors, the size of the health shock increases the negative effects on academic performance.

Administrative Data

The effects of economic activity on Covid-19 infections and all-cause mortality are the subject of his study. In a difference-in-differences framework, we take advantage of the distribution of essential sectors across provinces, which were spared a national lockdown in Italy during the first wave of the pandemic, as well as a wealth of administrative data for this purpose. We find that there are 1.1 additional daily cases and 0.32 additional daily deaths per 100,000 people for every standard deviation increase in essential workers per built square kilometer. The development of Swedish children's mental and physical health as a result of a daycare reform is the subject of this study. Daycare costs were significantly reduced as a result of the reform, as was the availability. We use a one-of-a-kind collection of comprehensive individual-level healthcare register data from 1999 to 2008.We estimate the short- and medium-term effects on child health at various ages by taking advantage of variation in reform exposure by birth cohort. In the medium term, we observe a significant reduction in mental disorders among children affected by the reform. The reform results in significant and immediate increases in the likelihood of children being diagnosed with physical health conditions that eventually go away. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are strongly associated with the reform effects, according to sub-sample analyses. When compared to children who are not affected, affected children have fewer primary school-related visits but more general visits to the doctor at younger ages. People can enter conditional cash lotteries (CCLs) to win cash prizes if they make specific behavioral changes. The first CCL to focus on COVID-19 vaccinations, Ohio's Vax-A-Million initiative, is the subject of our case study. We find that Ohio's incentive program, which costs sixty-eight dollars per person persuaded to vaccinate, increases the vaccinated share of the state population by 1.5% (0.7 pp), forming a synthetic control from other states. We demonstrate that this reduces COVID-19 significantly, preventing at least one infection for every six vaccinations that the lottery successfully encouraged. These findings hold promise for CCL public health initiatives that are similar. In anticipation of rarely estimated persistent effects, temporary incentives are provided. Three years after their withdrawal, we estimate the effects of two health insurance incentives using a nationwide randomized experiment in the Philippines. We discover that enrollment was affected over time by both temporary incentives. A modest but extremely long-lasting effect of a premium subsidy. Those who were initially unresponsive to the subsidy received application assistance, which had a much larger but less long-lasting impact. Those who had a higher initial stated willingness to pay were convinced to enroll and continue enrolling thanks to the subsidy. By attracting those who stated that they valued insurance less and were less likely to re-enroll when the incentives were removed, the offer of application assistance to initial non-compliance with the subsidy achieved a greater immediate effect.