IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/amjhec/doi10.1086-711564.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Learning By Suffering?

Author

Listed:
  • Ginger Zhe Jin
  • Thomas G. Koch

Abstract

An annual flu vaccination is one of the least controversial and most widely recommended preventive health measures. However, only a fraction of those who are suggested to get a flu vaccination actually receive it. We focus on past personal outcomes to understand how individual learning influences patterns over time using medical claims for a 5 percent panel sample of Medicare beneficiaries. We find that individuals learn from personal suffering from the flu and such learning is conditional on whether they had taken a flu vaccination in the same flu season. If they did not get vaccinated for the flu, having the flu later on encourages them to get the flu vaccine the following year. But if they had been vaccinated and still got the flu, their likelihood of getting a flu shot next year is significantly reduced. The outbreak of the H1N1 flu did not break the qualitative pattern of “learning by suffering” but it does change the magnitude of response.

Suggested Citation

  • Ginger Zhe Jin & Thomas G. Koch, 2021. "Learning By Suffering?," American Journal of Health Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 7(1), pages 68-94.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:amjhec:doi:10.1086/711564
    DOI: 10.1086/711564
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711564
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711564
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/711564?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 15th March 2021
      by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog on 2021-03-15 12:00:14

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Erkmen G. Aslim & Wei Fu & Chia-Lun Liu & Erdal Tekin, 2022. "Vaccination Policy, Delayed Care, and Health Expenditures," NBER Working Papers 30139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alexander Karaivanov & Dongwoo Kim & Shih En Lu & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2022. "COVID-19 vaccination mandates and vaccine uptake," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(12), pages 1615-1624, December.
    3. Nowak, Sarah A. & Parker, Andrew M. & Gidengil, Courtney A. & Richardson, Andrea S. & Walsh, Matthew M. & Kennedy, David P. & Vardavas, Raffaele, 2022. "Reciprocal relationships among influenza experiences, perceptions, and behavior: Results from a national, longitudinal survey of United States adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).

    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:ucp:amjhec:doi:10.1086/711564. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHE .

    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.