Social Health Insurance and the Use of Formal and Informal Care in Developing Countries: Evidence from Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme

Stephen O. Abrokwah, Kevin Callison and Donald J. Meyer

Journal of Development Studies, 2019, vol. 55, issue 7, 1477-1491

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between the use of formal and informal health care in a developing country setting by examining the introduction of a social health insurance scheme in Ghana. We estimate the effects of gaining coverage on changes in care seeking behaviour and show how these effects differ by age and wealth status. District-level differences in the implementation of the insurance scheme provide exogenous variation in access to insurance and allow us to address issues with selection into coverage. Results indicate that insurance access strongly increased use of formal care and reduced out-of-pocket expenditures on health services.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2017.1414192 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jdevst:v:55:y:2019:i:7:p:1477-1491

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2017.1414192

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().