Total expenditure elasticity of spending on self-treatment and professional healthcare: a case of Russia

Evguenii Zazdravnykh (), Andrey Aistov () and Ekaterina Aleksandrova
Additional contact information
Evguenii Zazdravnykh: HSE University
Andrey Aistov: HSE University

International Journal of Health Economics and Management, 2024, vol. 24, issue 1, No 4, 105 pages

Abstract: Abstract The studies on the demand for healthcare in low- and middle-income countries rarely take into consideration the fact that many people spend their income on self-treatment and professional treatment. The estimation of the income elasticity of demand for self-treatment and professional treatment can show a more precise picture of the affordability of professional care. This paper contributes to the discussion around estimates of income elasticity of health spending and discussion whether professional care and self-treatment are close to a luxury good and inferior good respectively in a middle-income country. We apply the switching regression model to explain the choice between self-treatment and professional healthcare via estimates of the income elasticity. Estimates are made with the use of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey — Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE), a nationally representative survey. While individual expenditure on professional treatment is higher than that on self-treatment, our estimates show that expenses on professional treatment can be income inelastic except when spending on medicines prescribed by a physician that are elastic. The results also indicate that cost of self-treatment is income elastic. In all cases, the considered income elasticities are statistically insignificant between professional and self-treatment.

Keywords: Healthcare expenditures; Income elasticity; Self-treatment; Healthcare; Developing country (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10754-023-09353-0 Abstract (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:kap:ijhcfe:v:24:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s10754-023-09353-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10754/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10754-023-09353-0

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Health Economics and Management is currently edited by Leemore Dafny, Robert Town, Mark Pauly, David Dranove and Pedro Pita Barros

More articles in International Journal of Health Economics and Management from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().