Waiting times and socioeconomic status: does sample selection matter?

A. Sharma, Luigi Siciliani and Anthony Harris
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Anand Sharma and Anurag Sharma ()

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: An increasing amount of empirical evidence suggests that patients with higher socioeconomic status wait less within publicly-funded hospitals to receive non-emergency (elective) surgery. Using data from Australia, we investigate the extent to which such gradient can be explained by sample selection, with richer patients being more likely to opt for treatment in the private sector when faced with waiting times in the public sector. We show that, once the potential biases introduced by sample selection are taken into account, the gradient between waiting times and socioeconomic status reduces significantly in size but does not disappear.

Keywords: Hospital Waiting Times; Socio-economic Gradient; Quantile regression with sample selection; Heckman model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C21 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Waiting times and socioeconomic status: Does sample selection matter? (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:11/22

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