IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/17069.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income-Based Disparities in Health Care Utilization under Universal Coverage in Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Guido Cataife
  • Charles J. Courtemanche

Abstract

Since Brazil's adoption of universal health care in 1988, the country's health care system has consisted of a mix of private providers and free public providers. We test whether income-based disparities in medical visits and medications remain in Brazil despite universal coverage using a nationally representative sample of over 48,000 households. Additional income is associated with less public sector utilization and more private sector utilization, both using simple correlations and regressions controlling for household characteristics and local area fixed effects. Importantly, the increase in private care use is greater than the drop in public care use. Also, income and unmet medical needs are negatively associated. These results suggest that access limitations remain for low-income households despite the availability of free public care.

Suggested Citation

  • Guido Cataife & Charles J. Courtemanche, 2011. "Income-Based Disparities in Health Care Utilization under Universal Coverage in Brazil," NBER Working Papers 17069, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17069
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17069.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angrist, Joshua D, 2001. "Estimations of Limited Dependent Variable Models with Dummy Endogenous Regressors: Simple Strategies for Empirical Practice," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(1), pages 2-16, January.
    2. Andrew M. Jones, 2012. "health econometrics," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Andrew M. Jones (ed.), 2006. "The Elgar Companion to Health Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3572.
    4. Angrist, Joshua D, 2001. "Estimations of Limited Dependent Variable Models with Dummy Endogenous Regressors: Simple Strategies for Empirical Practice: Reply," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(1), pages 27-28, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Palmer, Michael G. & Nguyen, Thi Minh Thuy, 2012. "Mainstreaming health insurance for people with disabilities," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 600-613.
    2. Thierry Magnac & Eric Maurin, 2008. "Partial Identification in Monotone Binary Models: Discrete Regressors and Interval Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 835-864.
    3. Augusto Mendoza Calderón, 2017. "El Efecto del Empleo sobre la Violencia Doméstica: Evidencia para las Mujeres Peruanas," Working Papers 99, Peruvian Economic Association.
    4. Sastry, Narayan & Gregory, Jesse, 2013. "The effect of Hurricane Katrina on the prevalence of health impairments and disability among adults in New Orleans: Differences by age, race, and sex," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 121-129.
    5. Bratti, Massimiliano & Mendola, Mariapia, 2014. "Parental health and child schooling," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 94-108.
    6. Guillermo Cruces & Sebastian Galiani, 2003. "Generalizing the Causal Effect of Fertility on Female Labor Supply," Labor and Demography 0310002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Giorgio Di Pietro, 2018. "The academic impact of natural disasters: evidence from L’Aquila earthquake," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 62-77, January.
    8. Park, Cheolsung & Kang, Changhui, 2008. "Does education induce healthy lifestyle?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1516-1531, December.
    9. Stefan Boes & Michael Gerfin, 2016. "Does Full Insurance Increase the Demand for Health Care?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(11), pages 1483-1496, November.
    10. Mathenge, Mary K. & Smale, Melinda & Olwande, John, 2012. "The Impact of Maize Hybrids on Income, Poverty, and Inequality among Smallholder Farmers in Kenya," Food Security International Development Working Papers 146931, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    11. Lahiri, Bidisha & Ali, Haider, 2022. "Inspections, informal payments and tax payments by firms," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA).
    12. Nabanita Datta Gupta & Marianne Simonsen, 2010. "Effects of Universal Child Care Participation on Pre-teen Skills and Risky Behaviors," Economics Working Papers 2010-07, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    13. Huang, Qianqian & Jiang, Feng & Lie, Erik & Yang, Ke, 2014. "The role of investment banker directors in M&A," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 269-286.
    14. Peter Nemec, 2024. "Contesting the public works domain: examining the factors affecting presence and success of SMES in public procurement," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 67(5), pages 2135-2173, November.
    15. Schleich, Joachim & Faure, Corinne & Meissner, Thomas, 2021. "Adoption of retrofit measures among homeowners in EU countries: The effects of access to capital and debt aversion," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    16. Sonia Bhalotra & Samantha Rawlings, 2013. "Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 660-672, May.
    17. Kere, Eric Nazindigouba & Choumert, Johanna & Combes Motel, Pascale & Combes, Jean Louis & Santoni, Olivier & Schwartz, Sonia, 2017. "Addressing Contextual and Location Biases in the Assessment of Protected Areas Effectiveness on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazônia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 148-158.
    18. Cuong Viet Nguyen, 2022. "The effect of preschool attendance on Children's health: Evidence from a lower middle‐income country," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(8), pages 1558-1589, August.
    19. Philip DeCicca & Donald Kenkel & Feng Liu, 2015. "Reservation Prices: An Economic Analysis of Cigarette Purchases on Indian Reservations," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 68(1), pages 93-118, March.
    20. Adriana D. Kugler & Robert M. Sauer, 2005. "Doctors without Borders? Relicensing Requirements and Negative Selection in the Market for Physicians," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(3), pages 437-466, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I0 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:17069. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.