EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The “Double Expansion of Morbidity” Hypothesis: Evidence from Italy

Vincenzo Atella, Federico Belotti, Claudio Cricelli (cricelli@gmail.com), Desislava Dankova (dankova@ceis.uniroma2.it), Joanna Kopinska, Alessandro Palma and Andrea Piano Mortari
Additional contact information
Claudio Cricelli: SIMG
Desislava Dankova: CEIS, University of Rome Tor Vergata, http://www.ceistorvergata.it

No 396, CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS

Abstract: The last few decades have been characterized by an increase in the number of years lived in bad health, lending support to the “Expansion of Morbidity” hypothesis. In this paper we propose the “Double Expansion of Morbidity” (DEM) hypothesis, arguing that not only life expectancy gains have been transformed into years lived in “bad health”, but also, due to an earlier onset of chronic diseases, the number of years spent in “good health” is actually reduced. Limited to the Italian case, we present and discuss a set of empirical evidence confirming the DEM hypothesis. In particular, we find that from 2004 to 2014 the average number of years spent with chronic conditions in Italy increased by 7.2 years 2.3 years of which are due to an increase in life expectancy and 4.9 years due to a reduction in the age of onset of chronic conditions. Compared with 2004, in 2014, this phenomenon generated extra public health expenditure of nearly 6.3 billion euros. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

Keywords: Life expectancy; Double expansion hypothesis; Health expenditure; Italy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I10 I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2017-02-03, Revised 2018-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ceistorvergata.it/RePEc/rpaper/RP396.pdf Main text (application/pdf)

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:rtv:ceisrp:396

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
https://ceistorvergata.it
segr.ceis@economia.uniroma2.it

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Barbara Piazzi (piazzi@ceis.uniroma2.it).

 
Page updated 2025-01-19
Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:396