South African Trends in Health Outcomes and Health-Related Behaviour: Evidence from Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys

Kehinde Omotoso and Steven Koch

No 201650, Working Papers from University of Pretoria, Department of Economics

Abstract: This study examines trends in ill-health status, medical aid coverage and public health care facility utilisation across a spectrum of socio-demographic variables, using population- weighted General Household Surveys (GHS) covering the years 2004-2014. As there are few obvious patterns in the raw health variables' time series, the analysis, which is descriptive in nature, relies upon both parametric and nonparametric analysis to smooth the time series in order to outline a few general trends. Over time, medical aid coverage and the general population's `preference' for public health care decreased by 0.2% and 0.1% per year, respectively, while reports of ill-health status increased by 0.4% annually. Moreover, the probability that an individual, who is covered by a medical aid scheme, would utilize public health care decreased by 44%.

Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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