This study explores the relationship between Asian dust storms (ADSs), asthma hospital admissions and average medical cost discharge. We adopt the hospitalisation data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance research database covering the period from 2000 to 2009. The autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous variables (ARIMAX) analyses were performed to explore the relationship between ADS and asthma hospital admissions, adjusting for temperature, air pollutants and season dummy. The results show that ADS events do generate a critical influence upon the occurrences of asthma on post-ADS events from days 1 through 3, with an average of 17-20 more hospitalised admissions, and have stronger effects on preschool children, middle-aged people and the elderly. From the perspective of medical expenses, the cost of hospitalised admissions for asthma substantially rises daily, on average, by NT$634,698 to NT$787,407 during ADS event days. This study suggests that government should establish a forecast and alert system and release warnings about dust storms, so that the individuals predisposed to asthma can take precautionary measures to reduce their outdoor exposure. Consequently, personal risk and medical expenditure could be reduced significantly, especially for preschool children, middle-aged people and the elderly with asthma.
This is the first research to examine a potential relation between stock market volatility and mental disorders. Using data on daily incidences of mental disorders in Taiwan over 4000 days from 1998 through 2009 to assess the time-series relation between stock price movements and mental disorders, we observe that stock price fluctuation clearly affects the hospitalization of mental disorders. We find that during a 12-year follow-up period, a low stock price index, a daily fall in the stock price index and consecutive daily falls in the stock price index are all associated with greater of mental disorders hospitalizations. A 1000-point fall in the TAIEX (Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index) increases the number of daily mental disorders hospitalizations by 4.71%. A 1% fall in the TAIEX in one single day increases daily hospitalizations for mental disorders by 0.36%. When the stock price index falls one consecutive day, it causes a daily increase of approximately 0.32% hospitalizations due to mental disorders on that day. Stock price index is found to be significant for both gender and all age groups. In addition, daily change is significant for both gender and middle-age groups, whereas accumulated change is significant for males and people aged 45-64. Stockholdings can help people accumulate wealth, but they can also increase mental disorders hospitalizations. In other words, stock price fluctuations do drive people crazy.
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