 Health effects of introducing an unconditional child benefit in Poland: Evidence from a difference in differences analysisMichał Brzeziński and Artur Yaniuk Health Policy, 2024, vol. 149, issue C Abstract: The association between income and health is well-documented, yet the impact of unconditional child benefits on health in high-income countries remains unclear. This study evaluates the health effects of a generous unconditional child transfer introduced in Poland in 2016. We employed a difference-in-differences methodology using 2010–2019 data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Our analysis compared health outcomes between parents eligible for the child benefit and a control group of childless individuals and parents of ineligible children. The introduction of the child benefit was associated with a 2.7 percentage point increase in reporting very good self-perceived health among beneficiaries. The improvement was more significant among the lower-income half, and there was a notable decrease in unmet medical and dental needs by 1.4 percentage points. The policy significantly improved health outcomes, suggesting the potential of unconditional cash transfers to enhance health in high-income countries, particularly for economically disadvantaged groups. Keywords: Child benefits; Income; Cash transfers; Health; Unmet medical needs (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:149:y:2024:i:c:s0168851024001799 DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2024.105169 Access Statistics for this article Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier |
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