IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-12-00335.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Eating Behavior and the Utilization of Outpatient Services - The Case of Taiwan

Author

Listed:
  • Yen-ju Lin

    (Department of Public Finance and Taxation, National Taichung University of Science and Technology)

  • Chun-chih Chen

    (Department of Economics, National Taipei University)

Abstract

This study analyzes the 2001 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Health Insurance Research Dataset (NHIRD) in Taiwan to evaluate the impact of eating behavior on outpatient service utilization and expenditure using a two-part model. Our empirical analysis suggests that eating behavior is significantly associated with the utilization of outpatient services and with medical expenditure. If a person has grains, fruit or milk every day, the probability of using outpatient services and incurring medical expenditures is significantly lower. In addition, the probability of using outpatient services and related expenditure is higher for the people who have sweet food every day. Moreover, we also find that a higher eating quality reduces the probability of using outpatient services and the expenditure is also lower in the case of those people who develop a high eating quality once they decide to visit a doctor. If eating behavior is improved, the morbidities associated with chronic diseases may be reduced, which will further alleviate the burden of national medical expenditure. The implication for policy making is that healthy eating behavior should be promoted, especially among adolescents, since eating behavior is not easily changed once it has been formed.

Suggested Citation

  • Yen-ju Lin & Chun-chih Chen, 2012. "Eating Behavior and the Utilization of Outpatient Services - The Case of Taiwan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 2181-2197.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2012/Volume32/EB-12-V32-I3-P211.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beverly Tepper & Lee Rosenzweig, 1999. "Assessing the importance of health and nutrition related factors on food demand: a variable preference investigation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(12), pages 1541-1549.
    2. Hansen, Paul & King, Alan, 1998. "Health care expenditure and GDP: panel data unit root test results--comment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 377-381, June.
    3. McCoskey, Suzanne K. & Selden, Thomas M., 1998. "Health care expenditures and GDP: panel data unit root test results," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 369-376, June.
    4. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Sogaard, Jes & Andersson, Fredrik & Jonsson, Bengt, 1992. "An econometric analysis of health care expenditure: A cross-section study of the OECD countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 63-84, May.
    5. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1992. "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 3-21, Summer.
    6. Basiotis, P. P. & Carlson, A. & Gerrior, S. A. & Juan, W. Y. & Lino, M., 2002. "The Healthy Eating Index: 1999-2000," CNPP Reports 311367, United States Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
    7. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1977. "Medical-Care Expenditure: A Cross-National Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 12(1), pages 115-125.
    8. Hitiris, Theo & Posnett, John, 1992. "The determinants and effects of health expenditure in developed countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 173-181, August.
    9. Rashad, Inas, 2006. "Structural estimation of caloric intake, exercise, smoking, and obesity," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 268-283, May.
    10. Getzen, Thomas E., 2000. "Health care is an individual necessity and a national luxury: applying multilevel decision models to the analysis of health care expenditures," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 259-270, March.
    11. Alaimo, K. & Olson, C.M. & Frongillo E.A., Jr. & Briefel, R.R., 2001. "Food insufficiency, family income, and health in US preschool and school-aged children," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 91(5), pages 781-786.
    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. Fernando Trujillo-Olea & Julián Alfredo Fernández-Niño & Jorge Salmerón & Katia Gallegos-Carrillo, 2018. "Prospective patterns of modifiable health risk behaviors and the utilization of healthcare services in the “Health Workers Cohort Study” in Mexico," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-18, December.

    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. Moheddine Younsi & Mohamed Chakroun & Amine Nafla, 2016. "Robust analysis of the determinants of healthcare expenditure growth: evidence from panel data for low-, middle- and high-income countries," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 580-601, October.
    2. Hartwig, Jochen, 2008. "What drives health care expenditure?--Baumol's model of 'unbalanced growth' revisited," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 603-623, May.
    3. Muhammad Arshad Khan & Muhammad Iftikhar Ul Husnain, 2019. "Is health care a luxury or necessity good? Evidence from Asian countries," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 213-233, June.
    4. Baltagi, Badi H. & Moscone, Francesco, 2010. "Health care expenditure and income in the OECD reconsidered: Evidence from panel data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 804-811, July.
    5. Hyejin Lee & Dong-Yop Oh & Ming Meng, 2019. "Stationarity and cointegration of health care expenditure and GDP: evidence from tests with smooth structural shifts," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 631-652, August.
    6. Niklas Potrafke, 2012. "Political cycles and economic performance in OECD countries: empirical evidence from 1951–2006," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 155-179, January.
    7. Helmut Herwartz & Bernd Theilen, 2003. "The determinants of health care expenditure: testing pooling restrictions in small samples," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(2), pages 113-124, February.
    8. Joan Costa-Font & Marin Gemmill & Gloria Rubert, 2008. "Re-visiting the Health Care Luxury Good Hypothesis: Aggregation, Precision, and Publication Biases?," Working Papers in Economics 197, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    9. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225.
    10. Chakroun, Mohamed, 2009. "Health care expenditure and GDP: An international panel smooth transition approach," MPRA Paper 14322, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Potrafke, Niklas, 2010. "The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: Do government ideology and electoral motives matter?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 797-810, December.
    12. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7972 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Löthgren, Mickael, 1998. "International Health Expenditure and GDP: New Multivariate Cointegration Panel Data Results," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 258, Stockholm School of Economics.
    14. Grigorakis, Nikolaos & Floros, Christos & Tsangari, Haritini & Tsoukatos, Evangelos, 2018. "Macroeconomic and financing determinants of out of pocket payments in health care: Evidence from selected OECD countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1290-1312.
    15. Marwa Farag & A. NandaKumar & Stanley Wallack & Dominic Hodgkin & Gary Gaumer & Can Erbil, 2012. "The income elasticity of health care spending in developing and developed countries," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 145-162, June.
    16. Di Matteo, Livio & Cantarero-Prieto, David, 2018. "The Determinants of Public Health Expenditures: Comparing Canada and Spain," MPRA Paper 87800, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Di Matteo, Livio, 2005. "The macro determinants of health expenditure in the United States and Canada: assessing the impact of income, age distribution and time," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 23-42, January.
    18. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225, March.
    19. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Lothgren, Mickael, 2000. "On stationarity and cointegration of international health expenditure and GDP," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 461-475, July.
    20. Helmut Herwartz & Bernd Theilen, 2014. "Health Care And Ideology: A Reconsideration Of Political Determinants Of Public Healthcare Funding In The Oecd," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(2), pages 225-240, February.
    21. Badi H. Baltagi & Raffaele Lagravinese & Francesco Moscone & Elisa Tosetti, 2017. "Health Care Expenditure and Income: A Global Perspective," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(7), pages 863-874, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Eating Behavior; Nutrition; Outpatient services; Outpatient Expenditures;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00335. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.