A Panel Study on Financial Burden and Spending of Health Expenditure of the Elderly Households : Focusing on Age groups

Abstract

Korea experiences rapid population aging and increase in health expenditure. The elderly made up a record 13.1% of the total population and 37.8% of the total health spending in 2015. And this would be accelerated because the baby boomers are becoming 65 years old and more by 2020. Catastrophic Health Expenditure(CHE) is the index which can represents the households’ burden of health spending. Despite its importance, there has been few studies about CHE of the elderly households and especially no panel study yet. Therefore, this study is carried out. The study used 3-year data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study conducted from 2012 to 2014. We defined CHE if a household’s health expenditure is equal or greater than the threshold value if income remaining after subsistence needs has been met. We used 3 different threshold values which are 10%, 20% and 30%. In order to look at the elderly households which experienced CHE in depth, correspondence analysis and panel logit analysis were conducted. Also, based on the Two-part Model, Panel analysis was conducted in order to define the factors that affect the households which experienced CHE at 10% threshold level to spend health expenditure. This study showed two notable results. First, there has been a difference in CHE occurrence rates among 3 different age groups, which implies that the older people are, the more easily they can experience CHE. Secondly, the households with no private insurance are showed to have a higher CHE occurrence rate, showing that private insurance does not make a significant difference in health spendings. With the results, private insurance can play its role in protecting households from CHE as a supplement of national health insurance. Therefore, this study can be used as evidence to develop healthcare policy for the elderly. Also, it needs to conduct studies on CHE especially about different age groups.