Do economic crises lead to health and nutrition behavior responses ? analysis using longitudinal data from Russia

Using longitudinal data on more than 2,000 Russian families spanning the period between 2007 and 2010, this paper estimates the impact of the 2009 global financial crisis on food expenditures, health care expenditures, and doctor visits in Russia. The primary estimation strategy adopted is the semi-parametric difference-in-difference with propensity score matching technique. The analysis finds that household health and nutritional behavior indicators do not vary statistically between households that were crisis-affected and households that were not affected by the crisis. However, the analysis finds that crisis-affected poor families curtailed their out-of-pocket health expenditures during and after the crisis more than poor families that were not affected by the crisis did. In addition, crisis-affected vulnerable groups changed their health behavior. In particular, households with low educational attainment of household heads and households with more elderly people changed their health and nutrition behavior response when affected by the crisis. The results are invariant to the propensity score matching techniques and parametric fixed effects estimation models.