Community based health insurance schemes in Africa: The case of Rwanda

Abebe Abebe

No 463, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Community-based health insurance schemes (Mutuelles) in Rwanda are one of the largest experiments in community based risk-sharing mechanisms in Sub-Saharan Africa for health related problems. This study examines the impact of the program on demand for modern health care, mitigation of out-of-pocket catastrophic health expenditure and social inclusiveness based on a nationally representative household survey using traditional regression approach and matching estimator popular in the evaluation literature. Our findings suggest that Mutuelles have been successful in increasing utilization of modern health care services and reducing catastrophic health related expenditure. According to our preferred method, higher utilization of health care services was found among the insured non-poor than insured poor households, with comparable effect in reducing health-related expenditure shocks. This reinforces the inequity already inherent in the Mutuelles system.

Keywords: demand for health services; catastrophic health expenditure; average treatment effects; endogenous dummy variable; matching estimator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2010-08-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-mfd
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0463

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