IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0183325.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socioeconomic position and health services use in Germany and Spain during the Great Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Lourdes Lostao
  • Siegfried Geyer
  • Romana Albaladejo
  • Almudena Moreno-Lostao
  • Juana M Santos
  • Enrique Regidor

Abstract

Objective: The relationship of socioeconomic position with the use of health services may have changed with the emergence of the economic crisis. This study shows that relationship before and during the economic crisis, in Germany and in Spain. Methods: Data from the 2006 and 2011 Socio-Economic Panel carried out in Germany, and from the 2006 and 2011 National Health Surveys carried out in Spain were used. The health services investigated were physician consultations and hospitalization. The measures of socioeconomic position used were education and household income. The magnitude of the relationship between socioeconomic position and the use of each health services was estimated by calculating the percentage ratio by binary regression. Results: In Germany, in both periods, after adjusting for age, sex, type of health insurance and need for care, subjects belonging to the lower educational categories had a lower frequency of physician consultations, while those belonging to the lower income categories had a higher frequency of hospitalization. In the model comparing the two lower socioeconomic categories to the two higher categories, the percentage ratio for physician consultation by education was 0.97 (95%CI 0.96–0.98) in 2006 and 0.96 (95%CI 0.95–0.97) in 2011, and the percentage ratio for hospitalization by income was 1.14 (95%CI 1.05–1.25) in 2006 and 1.12 (95%CI 1.03–1.21) in 2011. In Spain, no significant socioeconomic differences were observed in either period in the frequency of use of these health services in the fully adjusted model. Conclusion: The results suggest that the economic crisis did not alter accessibility to the health system in either country, given that the socioeconomic pattern in the use of these health services was similar before and during the crisis in both countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Lourdes Lostao & Siegfried Geyer & Romana Albaladejo & Almudena Moreno-Lostao & Juana M Santos & Enrique Regidor, 2017. "Socioeconomic position and health services use in Germany and Spain during the Great Recession," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-12, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0183325
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183325
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0183325
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0183325&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0183325?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Annamaria Lusardi & Daniel Schneider & Peter Tufano, 2015. "The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Use: Comparative Evidence from Five High-Income Countries," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(1), pages 202-213, March.
    2. Jens Hoebel & Petra Rattay & Franziska Prütz & Alexander Rommel & Thomas Lampert, 2016. "Socioeconomic Status and Use of Outpatient Medical Care: The Case of Germany," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(5), pages 1-14, May.
    3. Eddy van Doorslaer & Cristina Masseria, 2004. "Income-Related Inequality in the Use of Medical Care in 21 OECD Countries," OECD Health Working Papers 14, OECD Publishing.
    4. Morris, Stephen & Sutton, Matthew & Gravelle, Hugh, 2005. "Inequity and inequality in the use of health care in England: an empirical investigation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(6), pages 1251-1266, March.
    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. Marc Saez & Maria Antònia Barceló & Carme Saurina & Andrés Cabrera & Antonio Daponte, 2019. "Evaluation of the Biases in the Studies that Assess the Effects of the Great Recession on Health. A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Domenica Matranga & Laura Maniscalco, 2022. "Inequality in Healthcare Utilization in Italy: How Important Are Barriers to Access?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-14, February.
    3. Jongsay Yong & Ou Yang, 2021. "Does socioeconomic status affect hospital utilization and health outcomes of chronic disease patients?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(2), pages 329-339, March.

    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. Hudson, Eibhlin & Nolan, Anne, 2015. "Public healthcare eligibility and the utilisation of GP services by older people in Ireland," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 24-43.
    2. Terraneo, Marco, 2015. "Inequities in health care utilization by people aged 50+: Evidence from 12 European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 154-163.
    3. Hugh Gravelle & Stephen Morris & Matt Sutton, 2012. "Economic Studies of Equity in the Consumption of Health Care," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 18, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Tavares, Lara Patrício & Zantomio, Francesca, 2017. "Inequity in healthcare use among older people after 2008: The case of southern European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(10), pages 1063-1071.
    5. Kurt R. Brekke & Tor Helge Holmås & Karin Monstad & Odd Rune Straume, 2018. "Socio‐economic status and physicians' treatment decisions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 77-89, March.
    6. E. Xie, 2011. "Income-related inequalities of health and health care utilization," Frontiers of Economics in China, Springer;Higher Education Press, vol. 6(1), pages 131-156, March.
    7. Cormac O'Dea & Ian Preston, 2012. "The distributional impact of public spending in the UK," IFS Working Papers W12/06, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    8. Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores, 2009. "A comparison of the health status and health care utilization patterns between foreigners and the national population in Spain: New evidence from the Spanish National Health Survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 370-378, August.
    9. Lostao, Lourdes & Regidor, Enrique & Geyer, Siegfried & Aïach, Pierre, 2007. "Patient cost sharing and social inequalities in access to health care in three western European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 367-376, July.
    10. Jonas Fooken & Varinder Jeet, 2022. "Using Australian panel data to account for unobserved factors in measuring inequities for different channels of healthcare utilization," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 23(4), pages 717-728, June.
    11. Sayaka Sakoda & Masaoki Tamura & Naohiko Wakutsu, 2022. "The Global Financial Crisis and Healthcare Inequality in Japan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 273-286, May.
    12. Jongsay Yong & Ou Yang, 2021. "Does socioeconomic status affect hospital utilization and health outcomes of chronic disease patients?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(2), pages 329-339, March.
    13. Eric French & Elaine Kelly & Richard Cookson & Carol Propper & Miqdad Asaria & Rosalind Raine, 2016. "Socio‐Economic Inequalities in Health Care in England," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 37, pages 371-403, September.
    14. Siskou, Olga & Kaitelidou, Daphne & Papakonstantinou, Vasiliki & Liaropoulos, Lycourgos, 2008. "Private health expenditure in the Greek health care system: Where truth ends and the myth begins," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(2-3), pages 282-293, December.
    15. Coast, Joanna, 2018. "A history that goes hand in hand: Reflections on the development of health economics and the role played by Social Science & Medicine, 1967–2017," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 227-232.
    16. Jiménez-Rubio, Dolores & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina, 2010. "Explaining the demand for pharmaceuticals in Spain: Are there differences in drug consumption between foreigners and the Spanish population?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(2-3), pages 217-224, October.
    17. David Cantarero-Prieto & Marta Pascual-Sáez & Carla Blázquez-Fernández, 2021. "Does Social Isolation Affect Medical Doctor Visits? New Evidence Among European Older Adults," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 787-804, April.
    18. Gao, Qiuming & Wang, Derek, 2021. "Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery: A study based in China," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    19. Nabanita Datta Gupta & Nicolai Kristensen, 2008. "Work environment satisfaction and employee health: panel evidence from Denmark, France and Spain, 1994–2001," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 9(1), pages 51-61, February.
    20. Schurer, Stefanie, 2014. "Bouncing Back from Health Shocks: Locus of Control, Labor Supply, and Mortality," IZA Discussion Papers 8203, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0183325. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.