Diabetic Risk Taking: The Role of Information, Education and Medication
Abstract
Diet adherence is a key determinant in minimizing the risk of diabetic health complications. Diabetics who ignore their doctor's advice, concerning diet, smoking and exercise, are taking a gamble. Food product innovation, improved understanding about the benefits of tight diabetic compliance, and increased information dissemination all provide incentives for diabetics to modify their behavior. This paper uses repeated cross-sections of the NHANES from 1971-1994 to document that diabetics are making better choices over time relative to earlier cohorts and relative to non-diabetics. They smoke less than their non-diabetic counterparts. Their consumption of cholesterol has fallen sharply and they are reducing their alcohol and sweets consumption. New medications have played an important role in improving diabetic quality of life. This paper studies whether access to improved diabetic medicine has created offsetting incentives such that diet compliance falls. I find little evidence that the more medicated display worse health habits. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic PublishersDownload Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Springer in its journal Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.
Volume (Year): 18 (1999)
Issue (Month): 2 (August)
Pages: 147-64
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=100299
Related research
Keywords:References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Blog mentions
As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:- The Economic Approach to Thinking About Diabetes
by Matthew Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2012-08-08 21:50:00
Cited by:
- Wu, Stephen, 2003. "Sickness and preventive medical behavior," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 675-689, July.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jrisku:v:18:y:1999:i:2:p:147-64For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Guenther Eichhorn) or (Christopher F. Baum).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

