IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wsu/wpaper/rosenman-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Public Finance of Healthy Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Rosenman

    (School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University)

Abstract

Lifestyle can often affect the likelihood an individual will have a future illness. Subsidies often mitigate the consequences of poor lifestyle choices. In this paper we explore tax-subsidy policies that lower the consequences of incurring a non-infectious disease. We find that a funding mechanism consistent with current US policy lowers the investment in healthy lifestyles by both the wealthy, who pay taxes, and the poor, who receive subsidies. We also explore alternative policy interventions such as investing in research to lessen the impact or probability of the disease if an individual gets sick.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Rosenman, 2009. "The Public Finance of Healthy Behavior," Working Papers 2009-18, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsu:wpaper:rosenman-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wfaculty.ses.wsu.edu/WorkingPapers/rosenman/wp2009-18_PFHB.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McClellan, Mark & Skinner, Jonathan, 2006. "The incidence of Medicare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 257-276, January.
    2. David M. Cutler, 2008. "Are We Finally Winning the War on Cancer?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 3-26, Fall.
    3. Picone, Gabriel & Uribe, Martin & Mark Wilson, R., 1998. "The effect of uncertainty on the demand for medical care, health capital and wealth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 171-185, April.
    4. Komlos, John & Smith, Patricia K. & Bogin, Barry, 2003. "Obesity and the Rate of Time Preference: Is there a Connection?," Discussion Papers in Economics 60, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    5. Hubbard, R Glenn & Skinner, Jonathan & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1995. "Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(2), pages 360-399, April.
    6. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    7. Samuel H. Preston & Jessica Y. Ho, 2009. "Low Life Expectancy in the United States: Is the Health Care System at Fault?," NBER Working Papers 15213, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Julie Lee & Mark McClellan & Jonathan Skinner, 1999. "The Distributional Effects of Medicare," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 13, pages 85-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Ehrlich, Isaac & Becker, Gary S, 1972. "Market Insurance, Self-Insurance, and Self-Protection," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(4), pages 623-648, July-Aug..
    10. Christophe Courbage & Augustin de Coulon, 2004. "Prevention and Private Health Insurance in the U.K," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 29(4), pages 719-727, October.
    11. Jay Bhattacharya & M. Kate Bundorf & Noemi Pace & Neeraj Sood, 2011. "Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Aspects of Obesity, pages 35-64, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Liljas, Bengt, 1998. "The demand for health with uncertainty and insurance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 153-170, April.
    13. Becker, Gary S & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "A Theory of Rational Addiction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 675-700, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2014. "A dynamic‐efficiency rationale for public investment in the health of the young," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 697-719, August.
    2. Lydia Lawless & Andreas Drichoutis & Rodolfo Nayga, 2013. "Time preferences and health behaviour: a review," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Peter T. Leeson & Henry A. Thompson, 2023. "Public choice and public health," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 195(1), pages 5-41, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bolin, Kristian & Lindgren, Björn, 2014. "Non-monotonic health behaviours - implications for individual health-related behaviour in a demand-for-health framework," Working Papers in Economics 588, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    2. Harris, Matthew & Kohn, Jennifer, 2015. "Reference dependent utility from health and the demand for medical care," MPRA Paper 61926, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Beni­tez-Silva, Hugo & Ni, Huan, 2008. "Health status and health dynamics in an empirical model of expected longevity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 564-584, May.
    4. Lukas, Daniel, 2010. "Patient autonomy and education in specific medical knowledge," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 07/10, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    5. Sidorenko, Alexandra, 2001. "Stochastic Model of Demand for Medical Care with Endogenous Labour Supply and Health Insurance," Departmental Working Papers 2001-08, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    6. Bolin, Kristian & Lindgren, Björn, 2016. "Non-monotonic health behaviours – implications for individual health-related behaviour in a demand-for-health framework," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 9-26.
    7. Nocetti Diego & Smith William T, 2010. "Uncertainty, the Demand for Health Care, and Precautionary Saving," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-31, August.
    8. Michael Grossman, 1999. "The Human Capital Model of the Demand for Health," NBER Working Papers 7078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2016. "Medicaid Insurance in Old Age," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(11), pages 3480-3520, November.
    10. Harold L. Cole & Soojin Kim & Dirk Krueger, 2012. "Analyzing the Effects of Insuring Health Risks: On the Trade-off between Short Run Insurance Benefits vs. Long Run Incentive Costs," NBER Working Papers 18572, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Bolin, Kristian & Caputo, Michael R., 2020. "Consumption and investment demand when health evolves stochastically," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    12. Udo Schneider & Jürgen Zerth, 2011. "Improving Prevention Compliance through Appropriate Incentives: Theoretical Modelling and Empirical Evidence," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(I), pages 71-106, March.
    13. Aida Isabel Tavares & Pedro Pita Barros, 2011. "Ex-ante Moral Hazard and Primary Prevention, evidence from Portugal," Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) 56, Departamento de Economia, Gestão e Engenharia Industrial, Universidade de Aveiro.
    14. Amitabh Chandra & Courtney Coile & Corina Mommaerts, 2023. "What Can Economics Say about Alzheimer's Disease?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 428-470, June.
    15. Khwaja, Ahmed, 2010. "Estimating willingness to pay for medicare using a dynamic life-cycle model of demand for health insurance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 156(1), pages 130-147, May.
    16. Fichera, Eleonora & Sutton, Matt, 2011. "State and self investments in health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1164-1173.
    17. Christian Dustmann & Frank Windmeijer, 2000. "Wages and the demand for health - a life cycle analysis," IFS Working Papers W99/20, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    18. Pelgrin, Florian & St-Amour, Pascal, 2016. "Life cycle responses to health insurance status," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 76-96.
    19. Yingying Dong, 2013. "How Health Insurance Affects Health Care Demand—A Structural Analysis Of Behavioral Moral Hazard And Adverse Selection," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 1324-1344, April.
    20. Andrey Aistov & Ekaterina Aleksandrova & Christopher J. Gerry, 2021. "Voluntary private health insurance, health-related behaviours and health outcomes: evidence from Russia," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(2), pages 281-309, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    lifestyle; health; policy; non-infectious diseases;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsu:wpaper:rosenman-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Danielle Engelhardt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecwsuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.