The urban–rural gap in healthcare infrastructure: does government ideology matter?

Niklas Potrafke and Felix Roesel

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2020, vol. 54, issue 3, 340-351

Abstract: Spatial inequalities in publicly provided goods such as healthcare facilities have substantial socioeconomic effects. Little is known, however, about why publicly provided goods diverge among urban and rural regions. This study exploits narrow parliamentary majorities in German states between 1950 and 2014 in a regression discontinuity (RD) framework to show that government ideology influences the urban–rural gap in public infrastructure. Left-wing governments relocate hospital beds from rural regions. It is proposed that left-wing governments do so to gratify their more urban constituencies. In turn, spatial inequalities in hospital infrastructure increase, which seems to influence general and infant mortality.

Keywords: publicly provided goods; spatial inequalities; political business cycles; government ideology; healthcare; hospitals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H42 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/224996/1/T ... e-infrastructure.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The urban–rural gap in healthcare infrastructure: does government ideology matter? (2020)
Working Paper: The urban-rural gap in health care infrastructure - does government ideology matter? (2019)
Working Paper: The Urban-Rural Gap in Health Care Infrastructure – Does Government Ideology Matter? (2019)
Working Paper: The urban-rural gap in healthcare infrastructure: does government ideology matter? (2019)
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:zbw:espost:224996

DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2019.1623390

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().