Nudging Households to Take Up Health Insurance: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Burkina Faso

Fadima Bocoum, Michael Grimm, Renate Hartwig () and Nathalie Zongo
Additional contact information
Fadima Bocoum: Institute de Recherche en Sciences de Santé (IRSS)
Renate Hartwig: University of Namur
Nathalie Zongo: Association Songui Manégré- Aide au développement Endogène (ASMADE)

No 10744, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper we analyze the impact of a randomized information package on the understanding and uptake of community based health insurance. The information package consists of a detailed brochure which is distributed to households through home visits, a video also presented in people's homes and a personalized phone reminder. Overall, we find significant treatment effects on insurance uptake at the margin, although insurance uptake is low in general. We also find evidence for a better understanding of insurance principles among treated households, in particular in poorer households and in households with literate household heads. Finally, we see that treated households share the information they received with their neighbors and this also has positive effects on their understanding of insurance principles. We find further suggestive evidence that information sharing remains locally concentrated and does not surpass a radius of 1 km. Our findings contribute to the understanding how knowledge about the functioning of insurance can be enhanced in a context where the concept of insurance is largely unknown and where strong cultural beliefs prevail, and eventually, how insurance uptake can be increased, although the latter may take more time.

Keywords: take-up; financial education; learning; encouragement design; health insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 G22 I13 M31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-exp, nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published as 'Can information increase the understanding and uptake of insurance? Lessons from a randomized experiment in rural Burkina Faso' in: Social Science and Medicine , 2019, 220, 102-111.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10744.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10744

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().