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Health Care Quality and Economic Inequality

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We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behaviour. We exploit district-wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality and precautionary saving. We find that in lower quality districts there is greater income and health dispersion and higher precautionary saving. The analysis carries important insights for the ongoing debate about the validity of the life-cycle model and interesting policy implications for the design of health care systems.

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  • Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri & Guglielmo Weber, 2004. "Health Care Quality and Economic Inequality," CSEF Working Papers 120, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:sef:csefwp:120
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    1. Massimo Baldini & Gilberto Turati, 2012. "Perceived quality of public services, liquidity constraints, and the demand of private specialist care," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 487-511, April.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

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