IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0218835.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mass evacuation and increases in long-term care benefits: Lessons from the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Author

Listed:
  • Tomohiro Morita
  • Michihito Ando
  • Yui Ohtsu

Abstract

Background: Though mass evacuation may increase the need for long-term care (LTC) services, how the need for LTC services increases and how the public LTC system affects it is not well understood. We evaluated changes in public LTC benefits for the people living in the mandatory evacuation areas established after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and examined the roles of the universal LTC insurance system in Japan. Methods: In order to evaluate the effect of the mandatory evacuation on LTC benefits, we examined the trends of LTC benefits in the Fukushima evacuation group and the nationwide non-evacuation group. We first decomposed per-elderly-individual benefits at the municipality level into the LTC certification rate and per-certified-individual benefits, and then implemented difference-in-differences analysis using these variables as outcomes. Results: Per-elderly-individual benefits significantly increased from 2012 onward in the evacuation group, and this was explained by an increase in the certification rate rather than in per-certified-individual benefits. Increases in per-elderly-individual benefits and the certification rate in the post-disaster period were observed in all but the highest care level, and the corresponding outcomes for the highest care level decreased immediately after the disaster. We also found that the increase in the certification rate had been mostly realized by an increase in the number of certified individuals. Conclusions: The increase in LTC benefits can be associated with the impact of the increase in the number of people newly certified to receive LTC benefits after the mandatory evacuation. In order to cope with the increase in utilization of long-term care and associated costs after disasters in aging societies, both formal long-term care services and social support for informal care for evacuees should be considered important.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomohiro Morita & Michihito Ando & Yui Ohtsu, 2019. "Mass evacuation and increases in long-term care benefits: Lessons from the Fukushima nuclear disaster," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-13, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0218835
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218835
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218835
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218835&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0218835?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. Gary Solon & Steven J. Haider & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2015. "What Are We Weighting For?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 301-316.
    2. Carlos Dobkin & Amy Finkelstein & Raymond Kluender & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2018. "The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 308-352, February.
    3. Amy Finkelstein, 2007. "The Aggregate Effects of Health Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Medicare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 1-37.
    4. Cotton, Jeremiah, 1988. "On the Decomposition of Wage Differentials," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(2), pages 236-243, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Han, Dan, 2023. "The impact of the 340B Drug Pricing Program on Critical Access Hospitals: Evidence from Medicare Part B," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    2. Johanna Catherine Maclean & Brendan Saloner, 2019. "The Effect of Public Insurance Expansions on Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 366-393, March.
    3. Andrea Park Chung & Martin Gaynor & Seth Richards-Shubik, 2017. "Subsidies and Structure: The Lasting Impact of the Hill-Burton Program on the Hospital Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(5), pages 926-943, December.
    4. Owen (O.A.) O'Donnell, 2019. "Financial Protection Against Medical Expense," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-010/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. David, Guy & Smith-McLallen, Aaron & Ukert, Benjamin, 2019. "The effect of predictive analytics-driven interventions on healthcare utilization," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 68-79.
    6. Shannon, Matthew, 2022. "The labour market outcomes of transgender individuals," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    7. Theodore F. Figinski & Erin Troland, 2020. "Health Insurance and Hospital Supply: Evidence from 1950s Coal Country," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-033, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. James Lake & Ding Liu, 2022. "Local Labor Market Effects of the 2002 Bush Steel Tariffs," CESifo Working Paper Series 9909, CESifo.
    9. Słoczyński, Tymon, 2012. "New Evidence on Linear Regression and Treatment Effect Heterogeneity," MPRA Paper 39524, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Charles Courtemanche & James Marton & Benjamin Ukert & Aaron Yelowitz & Daniela Zapata, 2018. "Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self‐Assessed Health," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 660-691, January.
    11. Bailey, James, 2016. "Can Health Spending Be Reined In through Supply Constraints? An Evaluation of Certificate-of-Need Laws," Working Papers 05192, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    12. Christie, Pamela & Shannon, Michael, 2001. "Educational attainment and the gender wage gap: evidence from the 1986 and 1991 Canadian censuses," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 165-180, April.
    13. Christofides, Louis N. & Pashardes, Panos, 2002. "Self/paid-employment, public/private sector selection, and wage differentials," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(6), pages 737-762, December.
    14. Howard Bodenhorn & Christopher Ruebeck, 2007. "Colourism and African–american wealth: evidence from the nineteenth-century south," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(3), pages 599-620, July.
    15. Kárpáti, D.;, 2022. "Household Finance and Life-Cycle Economic Decisions under the Shadow of Cancer," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 22/16, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    16. Jessamyn Schaller & Mariana Zerpa, 2019. "Short-Run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Child Health," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 5(1), pages 8-41, Winter.
    17. Sims, Katharine R.E. & Alix-Garcia, Jennifer M., 2017. "Parks versus PES: Evaluating direct and incentive-based land conservation in Mexico," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 8-28.
    18. Sami Napari, 2008. "The Early‐career Gender Wage Gap among University Graduates in the Finnish Private Sector," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(4), pages 697-733, December.
    19. Kim, Dongin & Steinbach, Sandro, 2021. "Spillover effects of foreign direct investment in the United States: County-level evidence from the food industry," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 313983, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Matz Dahlberg & Karin Edmark & Heléne Berg, 2017. "Revisiting the Relationship between Ethnic Diversity and Preferences for Redistribution: Reply," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 119(2), pages 288-294, April.

    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:pone00:0218835. 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.