Health Care Use, Out-of-Pocket Expenditure, and Macroeconomic Conditions during the Great Recession

Juan Du and Takeshi Yagihashi ()

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2015, vol. 15, issue 1, 119-156

Abstract: We study how macroeconomic conditions during the Great Recession affected health care utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures of American households. We use two data sources: the Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); each has its own advantages. The CE contains quarterly frequency variables, and the SIPP provides panel data at the individual level. Consistent evidence across the two datasets shows that utilization of routine medical care was counter-cyclical, whereas hospital care was pro-cyclical during the Great Recession. When we examine the pre-recession period, the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and health care use was either non-existent or in opposite directions, suggesting that this relationship may have been unique to the Great Recession.

Keywords: health care utilization; health insurance; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2014-0016 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:bejeap:v:15:y:2015:i:1:p:38:n:11

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2014-0016

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().