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Dangerous Liquidity and the Demand for Health Care: Evidence from the 2008 Stimulus Payments

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  • Tal Gross
  • Jeremy Tobacman

Abstract

Household finances can affect health and health care through several channels. To explore these channels, we exploit the randomized timing of the arrival of the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payments. We find that the payments raised the probability of an adult emergency department visit over the following 23 weeks by an average of 1.1 percent. This effect is difficult to reconcile with the Permanent Income Hypothesis. We observe little impact on avoidable hospitalizations or emergency visits for nonurgent conditions and no difference in effects as a function of health insurance coverage. By contrast, we show that the increase is driven by visits for urgent medical conditions, like drug- and alcohol-related visits. Complementary evidence suggests that consumers are not simply substituting from outpatient doctor visits to hospital care. The results thus suggest that liquidity constraints may not constitute a direct barrier to care, but rather that liquidity can increase health care utilization indirectly by increasing the need for care.

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  • Tal Gross & Jeremy Tobacman, 2014. "Dangerous Liquidity and the Demand for Health Care: Evidence from the 2008 Stimulus Payments," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(2), pages 424-445.
  • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:49:y:2014:ii:1:p:424-445
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    3. Andersson, Elvira & Lundborg, Petter & Vikström, Johan, 2015. "Income receipt and mortality — Evidence from Swedish public sector employees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 21-32.
    4. Tal Gross & Timothy J. Layton & Daniel Prinz, 2022. "The Liquidity Sensitivity of Healthcare Consumption: Evidence from Social Security Payments," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 175-190, June.
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    7. Fuchs-Schündeln, N. & Hassan, T.A., 2016. "Natural Experiments in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 923-1012, Elsevier.
    8. Carlos Alberto Belchior & Yara Gomes, 2022. "Liquidity constraints, cash transfers and the demand for health care in the Covid‐19 pandemic," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(11), pages 2369-2380, November.
    9. David Powell, 2020. "Does Labor Supply Respond to Transitory Income? Evidence from the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 1-38.
    10. Cuffe, Harold E. & Gibbs, Christopher G., 2017. "The effect of payday lending restrictions on liquor sales," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 132-145.
    11. Marco DiMaggio & Andrew F. Haughwout & Amir Kermani & Matthew Mazewski & Maxim L. Pinkovskiy, 2016. "Health spending slowed down in spite of the crisis," Staff Reports 781, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    12. UNAYAMA Takashi & KOMURA Norihiro & HATTORI Takahiro, 2021. "Impacts of Cash Transfers on Consumption during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Japanese Special Cash Payment (Japanese)," Discussion Papers (Japanese) 21022, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
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