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Removing financial barriers to organ and bone marrow donation: The effect of leave and tax legislation in the U.S

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  • Lacetera, Nicola
  • Macis, Mario
  • Stith, Sarah S.

Abstract

Many U.S. states have passed legislation providing leave to organ and bone marrow donors and/or tax benefits for live and deceased organ and bone marrow donations and to employers of donors. We exploit cross-state variation in the timing of such legislation to analyze its impact on organ donations by living and deceased persons, on measures of the quality of the transplants, and on the number of bone marrow donations. We find that these provisions do not have a significant impact on the quantity of organs donated. The leave laws, however, do have a positive impact on bone marrow donations, and the effect increases with the size of the population of beneficiaries and with the generosity of the legislative provisions. Our results suggest that this legislation works for moderately invasive procedures such as bone marrow donation, but these incentives may be too low for organ donation, which is riskier and more burdensome.

Suggested Citation

  • Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Stith, Sarah S., 2014. "Removing financial barriers to organ and bone marrow donation: The effect of leave and tax legislation in the U.S," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 43-56.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:33:y:2014:i:c:p:43-56
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2013.10.006
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    Cited by:

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    2. Nicola Lacetera, 2016. "Incentives and Ethics in the Economics of Body Parts," NBER Working Papers 22673, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Bruhin, Adrian & Goette, Lorenz & Haenni, Simon & Jiang, Lingqing, 2020. "Spillovers of prosocial motivation: Evidence from an intervention study on blood donors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    4. Trine Tornøe Platz & Nikolaj Siersbæk & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2019. "Ethically Acceptable Compensation for Living Donations of Organs, Tissues, and Cells: An Unexploited Potential?," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 1-14, February.
    5. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Stith, Sarah S., 2014. "Removing financial barriers to organ and bone marrow donation: The effect of leave and tax legislation in the U.S," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 43-56.
    6. Niu, Xiaofei & Li, Jianbiao, 2020. "Incentivizing organ donation by swearing an oath: The role of signature and ritual," EconStor Preprints 203243, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, revised 2020.
    7. Michael Haylock & Patrick Kampkötter & Mario Macis & Jürgen Sauter & Susanne Seitz & Robert Slonim & Daniel Wiesen & Alexander H. Schmidt, 2022. "Improving the Availability of Unrelated Stem Cell Donors: Evidence from a Major Donor Registry," NBER Working Papers 29857, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Ghanbariamin, Roksana & Chung, Bobby W., 2020. "The effect of the National Kidney Registry on the kidney-exchange market," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    9. Callison, Kevin & Levin, Adelin, 2016. "Donor registries, first-person consent legislation, and the supply of deceased organ donors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 70-75.
    10. Bilgel, Fırat & Galle, Brian, 2015. "Financial incentives for kidney donation: A comparative case study using synthetic controls," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 103-117.
    11. Becker, Gary S. & Elias, Julio Jorge & Ye, Karen J., 2022. "The shortage of kidneys for transplant: Altruism, exchanges, opt in vs. opt out, and the market for kidneys," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 211-226.
    12. Tianyuan Luo & Cesar L. Escalante, 2024. "Driver's licences for undocumented immigrants and post‐mortem organ donation," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(361), pages 70-92, January.
    13. Hawley, Zackary & Li, Danyang & Schnier, Kurt & Turgeon, Nicole, 2018. "Can we increase organ donation by reducing the disincentives? An experimental analysis," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 128-137.
    14. Judd B. Kessler & Alvin E. Roth, 2014. "Don't Take 'No' For An Answer: An Experiment With Actual Organ Donor Registrations," NBER Working Papers 20378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Stith, Sarah S. & Li, Xiaoxue, 2021. "Does increasing access-to-care delay accessing of care? Evidence from kidney transplantation," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    16. Kurt E. Schnier & Robert M. Merion & Nicole Turgeon & David Howard, 2018. "Subsidizing Altruism In Living Organ Donation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 398-423, January.
    17. Leipnitz, Sigrun & de Vries, Martha & Clement, Michel & Mazar, Nina, 2018. "Providing health checks as incentives to retain blood donors — Evidence from two field experiments," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 628-640.
    18. Bilgel, Firat, 2020. "State Gun Control Laws, Gun Ownership and the Supply of Homicide Organ Donors," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Organ donation; Bone marrow donation; Leave and tax legislation; Policy evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law

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