Reexamining Geographic Variation in Health and Health Care

Amy Finkelstein and Matthew Gentzkow

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2026, vol. 116, 138-143

Abstract: A large literature has documented widespread variation in health care spending per capita across areas of the United States without correspondingly better health outcomes. Recent work has used "mover designs" to estimate the causal impact of place on both health care spending and mortality. In this paper, we investigate whether places that increase health care spending also tend to be places that increase health. We find that they do not and discuss the implications.

JEL-codes: I12 I13 I18 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20261072 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25163 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional 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:aea:apandp:v:116:y:2026:p:138-143

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20261072

Access Statistics for this article

AEA Papers and Proceedings is currently edited by William Johnson and Kelly Markel

More articles in AEA Papers and Proceedings from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().