IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/rdevec/v19y2015i4p925-940.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Individual Health Account Scheme on Lifetime Income Redistribution: Evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Guan Gong
  • Hongmei Wang
  • Lingli Xu

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of a combination of individual health accounts (IHAs) and catastrophic insurance on lifetime income redistribution by examining the variations in end-of-life IHA balances and lifetime out-of-pocket health expenditures. We exploit longitudinal health expenditure data from 2005 to 2007 in Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province of China. We find a high concentration of low IHA balances at the end of life, with most equal to zero. This finding suggests that most IHA balances are used for health expenditures and that the income redistribution effect through the accumulation of IHA balance is limited. However, the results also show a wide variation in lifetime out-of-pocket spending in the form of deductibles and coinsurance, which implies serious inequality in individual financial burden that can lead to a large income redistribution effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Guan Gong & Hongmei Wang & Lingli Xu, 2015. "The Impact of Individual Health Account Scheme on Lifetime Income Redistribution: Evidence from China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 925-940, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:19:y:2015:i:4:p:925-940
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/rode.12179
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duan, Naihua, et al, 1983. "A Comparison of Alternative Models for the Demand for Medical Care," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 1(2), pages 115-126, April.
    2. Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-277, June.
    3. Meng, Qingyue & Rehnberg, Clas & Zhuang, Ning & Bian, Ying & Tomson, Goran & Tang, Shenglan, 2004. "The impact of urban health insurance reform on hospital charges: a case study from two cities in China," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 197-209, May.
    4. Liu, Yuanli & Hsiao, William C. & Eggleston, Karen, 1999. "Equity in health and health care: the Chinese experience," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(10), pages 1349-1356, November.
    5. Liu, Gordon G. & Zhao, Zhongyun & Cai, Renhua & Yamada, Tetsuji & Yamada, Tadashi, 2002. "Equity in health care access to: assessing the urban health insurance reform in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(10), pages 1779-1794, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jiang, Yunyun & Zhao, Tianhao & Zheng, Haitao, 2021. "Population aging and its effects on the gap of urban public health insurance in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    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. Jianmei Zhao & Hai Zhong, 2015. "Medical expenditure in urban China: a quantile regression analysis," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 387-406, December.
    2. Gordon G. Liu & Xiaodong Wu & Chaoyang Peng & Alex Z. Fu, 2003. "Urbanization And Health Care In Rural China," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 21(1), pages 11-24, January.
    3. Chen, Zhuo & Eastwood, David B. & Yen, Steven T., 2005. "Childhood Malnutrition In China: Change Of Inequality In A Decade," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19205, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    4. Mullahy, John, 1998. "Much ado about two: reconsidering retransformation and the two-part model in health econometrics," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 247-281, June.
    5. Ni, Xinwen, 2019. "Voting for Health Insurance Policy: the U.S. versus Europe," IRTG 1792 Discussion Papers 2019-012, Humboldt University of Berlin, International Research Training Group 1792 "High Dimensional Nonstationary Time Series".
    6. Qin Zhou & Gordon G. Liu & Sam Krumholz, 2017. "Is Chinese National Health Insurance Effective in the Face of Severe Illness? A Perspective from Health Service Utilization and Economic Burden," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1307-1329, July.
    7. Giampiero Marra & Matteo Fasiolo & Rosalba Radice & Rainer Winkelmann, 2023. "A flexible copula regression model with Bernoulli and Tweedie margins for estimating the effect of spending on mental health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1305-1322, June.
    8. Chen, Zhuo & Eastwood, David B. & Yen, Steven T., 2007. "A decade's story of childhood malnutrition inequality in China: Where you live does matter," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 139-154.
    9. Deb, Partha & Trivedi, Pravin K., 2002. "The structure of demand for health care: latent class versus two-part models," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 601-625, July.
    10. Takaku, Reo, 2017. "The Effect Of Patient Cost Sharing On Health Care Utilization Among Low-Income Children," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 58(1), pages 69-88, June.
    11. Chen, Chin-Shyan & Liu, Tsai-Ching & Chen, Li-Mei, 2003. "National Health Insurance and the antenatal care use: a case in Taiwan," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 99-112, April.
    12. Jade W Wei & Emma L Heeley & Stephen Jan & Yining Huang & Qifang Huang & Ji-Guang Wang & Yan Cheng & En Xu & Qidong Yang & Craig S Anderson & for the ChinaQUEST Investigators, 2010. "Variations and Determinants of Hospital Costs for Acute Stroke in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(9), pages 1-9, September.
    13. Amanda Kowalski, 2016. "Censored Quantile Instrumental Variable Estimates of the Price Elasticity of Expenditure on Medical Care," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 107-117, January.
    14. van Kleef, R.C. & Beck, K. & van de Ven, W.P.M.M. & van Vliet, R.C.J.A., 2008. "Risk equalization and voluntary deductibles: A complex interaction," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 427-443, March.
    15. Jay Dev Dubey, 2021. "Measuring Income Elasticity of Healthcare-Seeking Behavior in India: A Conditional Quantile Regression Approach," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 19(4), pages 767-793, December.
    16. Carol Rapaport & Christopher A. Trenholm, 2000. "What do we really know about trends in outpatient medical expenditures for children, 1977-1987?," Staff Reports 97, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    17. Randall P. Ellis & Pooja G. Mookim, 2013. "K-Fold Cross-Validation is Superior to Split Sample Validation for Risk Adjustment Models," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2013-026, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    18. Feng Huang & Li Gan`, 2017. "The Impacts of China's Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance on Healthcare Expenditures and Health Outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 149-163, February.
    19. Zhang, Anwen & Nikoloski, Zlatko & Mossialos, Elias, 2017. "Does health insurance reduce out-of-pocket expenditure? Heterogeneity among China's middle-aged and elderly," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 11-19.
    20. Mocan, H. Naci & Tekin, Erdal & Zax, Jeffrey S., 2004. "The Demand for Medical Care in Urban China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 289-304, February.

    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:bla:rdevec:v:19:y:2015:i:4:p:925-940. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1363-6669 .

    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.