 Healthy to Work: The Impact of Free Public Healthcare on Health Status and Labor Supply in JamaicaDiether Beuermann and Camilo Pecha No 7970, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Abstract: This study examines whether Jamaica's free public healthcare policy affectedhealth status and labor supply of adult individuals. It compares outcomes of adults without health insurance versus their insured counterparts, before and after policy implementation. The study finds that the policy reduced both the likelihood of suffering illnesses with associated lost work days and the number of lost days due to illnesses by 28.6 percent and 34 percent, respectively. Consistent with the absence of "employment lock", no effects are found on employment at the extensive margin. However, consistent with a reduced number of days lost due to illnesses, there is a positive effect of 2.15 additional weekly labor hours. This is primarily a labor supply effect as the study shows that both reported and imputed hourly wages decreased by 0.15 and 0.06 log-points respectively. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the policy added a yearly average of US$PPP 26.6 million worth of net real production to the economy during the period 2008-12. Keywords: health policy; health insurance (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:idb:brikps:7970 DOI: 10.18235/0011773 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC. |
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