Waiting times and socioeconomic status. Evidence from Norway

Fredrik Carlsen and Oddvar Kaarboe ()

No 08/10, Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate whether socioeconomic status, measured by income and education, affects waiting time when controls for severity and hospital specific conditions are included. We also examine which aspects of the hospital supply (attachment to local hospital, traveling time, or choice of hospital) that matter most for unequal treatment of different socioeconomic groups, and how different behavior responses can create discrimination. The study uses administrative data from all somatic elective inpatient and outpatient hospital stays in Norway. The main results are that we find very little indication of discrimination with regard to income. This result holds both for males and females. We find some indication of discrimination of men with low education as these men have a lower probability of zero waiting time. We also find a pro educational bias for women; as women with only primary education wait about 9 % (13 %) longer than women with upper secondary (tertiary) education.

Keywords: Health Care Markets; Regulations: Public Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2010-10-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ekstern.filer.uib.no/svf/2010/WP0810.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: WAITING TIMES AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS. EVIDENCE FROM NORWAY (2014)
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:hhs:bergec:2010_008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics Institutt for økonomi, Universitetet i Bergen, Postboks 7802, 5020 Bergen, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kjell Erik Lommerud ().