How Do Economic Shocks Affect Family Health Care Spending Burdens? / Irina B. Grafova, Alan C. Monheit, Rizie Kumar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grafova, Irina B.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Monheit, Alan C.

Kumar, Rizie.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26443.

NBER working paper series no. w26443

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

We use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) for the years 2004 - 2012 to examine the impact of economic shocks on the family's out-of-pocket health care spending burden. We define this burden as the share of family income devoted to out-of-pocket health care spending. In contrast to static, cross-sectional analyses, our study examines how the within-family change in spending burden over the two-year MEPS observation period responds to losses in family income, insurance, and employment. We also consider the impact of such losses on single-mother and two-parent families. To do so, we apply fractional response and health expenditure models using the correlated random effects (CRE) method to control for time-invariant, unobserved heterogeneity across family units. We find evidence that the change in the out-of-pocket spending burden is sensitive to income shocks, and that income changes rather than changes in health spending per se appears to drive changes in the out-of-pocket burden.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2019.