Micro-insurance at Scale: Evidence on Impact from Rwanda

Anuj Singh ()
Additional contact information
Anuj Singh: Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin

Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: Health insurance protects households from costly health shocks, and by encouraging health seeking behaviour, can safeguard earnings and assets. We confirm that micro-insurance serves as a social safety net by increasing health seeking behavior and reducing out of pocket medical expenses. We find evidence for complementarity between health micro-insurance membership and formal savings activity, confirming positive spillovers between formal financial products. We find substitution between health micro-insurance and informal financial services, where microinsurance crowds out both informal savings and informal borrowings. In obtaining these results, we use instrument variable estimation to correct for the issue of self-selection, an issue that undermines many previous studies. The study uses nationally representative cross-sectional data from Rwandan Integrated Living Conditions Survey conducted in 2005-06 and 2010-11.

Keywords: Micro-insurance; CBHI; Health Service Utilisation; OOP Expenses; Hardship Financing; Financial Status (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 G22 I13 I31 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ias and nep-mfd
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2018/TEP1218.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:tcd:tcduee:tep1218

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Colette Angelov ().