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Health Care Quality, Economic Inequality, and Precautionary Saving

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  • Tullio Jappelli

    (University of Salerno)

  • Luigi Pistaferri

    (Stanford University)

  • Guglielmo Weber

    (University of Padua)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri & Guglielmo Weber, 2006. "Health Care Quality, Economic Inequality, and Precautionary Saving," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0020, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    • Handle: RePEc:pad:wpaper:0020
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    Cited by:

    1. Fabbri, D & Robone, S, 2008. "The geography of hospital admission in a National Health Service with patient choice: evidence from Italy," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 08/29, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. Aida Caldera Sánchez & Alain de Serres & Naomitsu Yashiro, 2017. "Reforming in a Difficult Macroeconomic Context: A Review of Issues and Recent Literature," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(01), pages 1-41, February.
    3. Clovis Kerdrain & Isabell Koske & Isabelle Wanner, 2010. "The Impact of Structural Policies on Saving, Investment and Current Accounts," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 815, OECD Publishing.
    4. Courbage, Christophe & Rey, Béatrice, 2012. "Priority setting in health care and higher order degree change in risk," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 484-489.
    5. Clovis Kerdrain & Isabell Koske & Isabelle Wanner, 2011. "Current Account Imbalances: can Structural Reforms Help to Reduce Them?," OECD Journal: Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2011(1), pages 1-44.
    6. Patrice Ollivaud & Cyrille Schwellnus, 2013. "The Post-crisis Narrowing of International Imbalances: Cyclical or Durable?," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1062, OECD Publishing.
    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. Daniele Fabbri & Silvana Robone, 2010. "The geography of hospital admission in a national health service with patient choice," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(9), pages 1029-1047, September.
    9. Vincenzo Atella & Joanna Kopinska, 2014. "The impact of cost-sharing schemes on drug compliance in Italy: evidence based on quantile regression," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 59(2), pages 329-339, April.
    10. Raffaele Miniaci & Chiara Monfardini & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "How does consumption change upon retirement?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 257-280, April.
    11. Michele Limosani & Emanuele Millemaci, 2014. "Precautionary savings of agents with heterogeneous risk aversion," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(20), pages 2342-2361, July.
    12. Beraldo, Sergio & Montolio, Daniel & Turati, Gilberto, 2009. "Healthy, educated and wealthy: A primer on the impact of public and private welfare expenditures on economic growth," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 946-956, December.
    13. Weiwei Chen & Albert Okunade & Gregory G. Lubiani, 2014. "Quality–Quantity Decomposition Of Income Elasticity Of U.S. Hospital Care Expenditure Using State‐Level Panel Data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(11), pages 1340-1352, November.
    14. Christophe Courbage & Richard Peter & Béatrice Rey, 2022. "Incentive and welfare effects of correlated returns," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(1), pages 5-34, March.
    15. Christophe Courbage, 2014. "Saving motives and multivariate precautionary premia," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 37(2), pages 385-391, October.
    16. Omar Paccagnella & Vincenzo Rebba & Guglielmo Weber, 2013. "VOLUNTARY PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE AMONG THE OVER 50s IN EUROPE," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 289-315, March.
    17. Johannes Geyer, 2011. "The Effect of Health and Employment Risks on Precautionary Savings," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 408, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    18. Vincenzo Atella & Joanna Kopinska, 2012. "The impact of cost sharing schemes on drug compliance: evidence based on quantile regression," CEIS Research Paper 247, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 27 Jul 2012.
    19. Steinorth, Petra, 2011. "Impact of health savings accounts on precautionary savings, demand for health insurance and prevention effort," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 458-465, March.
    20. Helmut Herwartz & David Rodriguez-Justicia & Bernd Theilen, 2022. "A New Measure of Wage Risk: Occupation-Specific Evidence for Germany," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1427-1462, December.

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    JEL classification:

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

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