Health effects of introducing an unconditional child benefit in Poland: Evidence from a difference in differences analysis

IF 3.6 3区医学 Q1 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES

Health Policy Pub Date : 2024-09-21 DOI:10.1016/j.healthpol.2024.105169

Michal Brzezinski, Artur Yaniuk

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Abstract

The association between income and health is well-documented, yet the impact of unconditional child benefits on health in high-income countries remains unclear. This study evaluates the health effects of a generous unconditional child transfer introduced in Poland in 2016. We employed a difference-in-differences methodology using 2010–2019 data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Our analysis compared health outcomes between parents eligible for the child benefit and a control group of childless individuals and parents of ineligible children. The introduction of the child benefit was associated with a 2.7 percentage point increase in reporting very good self-perceived health among beneficiaries. The improvement was more significant among the lower-income half, and there was a notable decrease in unmet medical and dental needs by 1.4 percentage points. The policy significantly improved health outcomes, suggesting the potential of unconditional cash transfers to enhance health in high-income countries, particularly for economically disadvantaged groups.

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波兰引入无条件儿童福利对健康的影响：差异分析的证据

收入与健康之间的关系有据可查，但高收入国家无条件儿童福利对健康的影响仍不明确。本研究评估了波兰 2016 年推出的慷慨的无条件儿童转移对健康的影响。我们利用欧盟收入和生活条件统计（EU-SILC）中 2010-2019 年的数据，采用了差分法。我们的分析比较了有资格享受儿童福利的父母与无子女个人和不符合条件的儿童父母组成的对照组之间的健康结果。儿童福利的引入使受益人自我感觉健康状况非常好的比例提高了 2.7 个百分点。在低收入的一半人中，这种改善更为明显，未满足的医疗和牙科需求明显减少了 1.4 个百分点。该政策极大地改善了健康状况，表明无条件现金转移有可能改善高收入国家的健康状况，特别是经济弱势群体的健康状况。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Health Policy 医学-卫生保健

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

6.10%

发文量

157

审稿时长

3-8 weeks

期刊介绍： Health Policy is intended to be a vehicle for the exploration and discussion of health policy and health system issues and is aimed in particular at enhancing communication between health policy and system researchers, legislators, decision-makers and professionals concerned with developing, implementing, and analysing health policy, health systems and health care reforms, primarily in high-income countries outside the U.S.A.