While health services delivered near the end of life will continue to consume large portions of medical dollars, the portion paid by non-Medicare sources will likely rise as the population ages. Policies promoting improved allocation of resources for end-of-life care may not affect non-Medicare expenditures, which disproportionately support chronic and custodial care.
The mechanisms by which neighborhood environment and weight status are linked in later life differ by gender, with economic and social environment aspects being important for men and built environment aspects being salient for women.
This paper uses the difference-in-difference estimation approach to explore the self-selection bias in estimating the effect of neighborhood economic environment on self-assessed health among older adults. The results indicate that there is evidence of downward bias in the conventional estimates of the effect of neighborhood economic disadvantage on self-reported health, representing a lower bound of the true effect.
Families in constrained economic circumstances resulting from economic shocks face difficult choices regarding how best to spend their diminished resources. As families strive to preserve their living standards, decisions regarding health care use and its allocation among family members may become more discretionary and complex. Using two-year panel data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for 2004 to 2011, we examine how the intra-family allocation of health care spending responds to realized and anticipated changes in family economic status. We focus on the share of total family health care spending allocated to children, and measure realized economic shocks based on changes in the family's income, employment, and health insurance status. We account for anticipated economic shocks by differentiating families by whether they are observed prior to, at the onset of, or during the Great Recession, or in the post-recession period. Our findings suggest that both types of economic shocks affect the share of family health care spending allocated to children, with findings more pronounced for single-mother families. We also find that realized economic shocks have a greater impact on children's spending share than the anticipated change in economic status associated with the Great Recession and its recovery.
Families in constrained economic circumstances resulting from economic shocks face difficult choices regarding how best to spend their diminished resources. As families strive to preserve their living standards, decisions regarding health care use and its allocation among family members may become more discretionary and complex. Using two-year panel data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for 2004 to 2011, we examine how the intra-family allocation of health care spending responds to realized and anticipated changes in family economic status. We focus on the share of total family health care spending allocated to children, and measure realized economic shocks based on changes in the family's income, employment, and health insurance status. We account for anticipated economic shocks by differentiating families by whether they are observed prior to, at the onset of, or during the Great Recession, or in the post-recession period. Our findings suggest that both types of economic shocks affect the share of family health care spending allocated to children, with findings more pronounced for single-mother families. We also find that realized economic shocks have a greater impact on children's spending share than the anticipated change in economic status associated with the Great Recession and its recovery.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.