 Can greater access to secondary health care decrease health inequality? Evidence from bus line introduction to Arab towns in IsraelAamer Abu-Qarn () and Shirlee Lichtman-Sadot Economic Modelling, 2022, vol. 106, issue C Abstract: Health inequality can affect economic productivity, labor force participation, or the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Health disparities based on socioeconomic ranking are widely documented, but there is also growing evidence of disparities based on geographic locality. This paper investigates a potential contributing factor to socioeconomic and geographic-based health inequality: access to secondary health care. We exploit bus line introductions to Arab towns in Israel, which substantially increased secondary health care access among a mostly disadvantaged population, and find that older adult reporting of chronic health conditions increased in the short term. However, this effect fades away in the long run. We argue that greater chronic condition rates in the short term reflect higher diagnosis rates resulting from increased access to health care professionals rather than health deterioration. This effect weakens in the long run when the benefits of greater access to health care offset the higher diagnosis rates. Keywords: Public transportation; Health disparities; Place effects; Health care access; Secondary health care (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:106:y:2022:i:c:s0264999321002844 DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2021.105695 Access Statistics for this article Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier |
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