{"title":"The labour market returns to sleep","authors":"Joan Costa-Font , Sarah Fleche , Ricardo Pagan","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102840","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102840","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite the growing prevalence of insufficient sleep among individuals, we still know little about the labour market return to sleep. To address this gap, we use longitudinal data from Germany and leverage exogenous fluctuations in sleep duration caused by variations in time and local sunset times. Our findings reveal that a one-hour increase in weekly sleep is associated with a 1.6 percentage point rise in employment and a 3.4% increase in weekly earnings. Such effect on earnings stems from productivity improvements given that the number of working hours decreases with longer sleep duration. We also identify a key mechanism driving these effects, namely the enhanced mental well-being experienced by individuals who sleep longer hours.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629623001170/pdfft?md5=acfcaa5d9495a1c7147301d06b441654&pid=1-s2.0-S0167629623001170-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138300498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reminder design and childhood vaccination coverage","authors":"Jonas Cuzulan Hirani , Miriam Wüst","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102832","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102832","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>A major policy concern across public vaccination programs is non-compliance. Exploiting Danish population data and three national reforms in regression discontinuity designs, we document the effects of reminders for childhood </span>vaccination coverage<span><span>. Retrospective reminders are primarily effective for families with small children and when sent out close to the recommended vaccination age. Digital and postal reminders are equally effective. Prospective reminders increase timely vaccinations in later childhood and help reaching high coverage for new vaccines in increasingly complex vaccination programs. While reminders prompt additional preventive care for focal children, we find no </span>spillovers to other health behaviors or relatives.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135763736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Claudio A. Mora-García , Madeline Pesec , Andrea M. Prado
{"title":"The effect of primary healthcare on mortality: Evidence from Costa Rica","authors":"Claudio A. Mora-García , Madeline Pesec , Andrea M. Prado","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102833","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102833","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>This paper uses the gradual implementation of a primary healthcare (PHC) intervention in Costa Rica to examine the long-term effect of PHC on mortality. Nine years after opening a primary care center, known as a Health Area, there was an associated 13% reduction in age-adjusted mortality rate in the assigned patient population. The effect was highest among adults over 65 years of age and for those with </span>noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular-related causes of death. We also show that as Health Areas opened, more individuals sought care at primary care clinics, while fewer sought care at emergency rooms; these changes may have partially mediated the effect of the intervention on mortality.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135516533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pharmaceutical demand response to utilization management","authors":"Oren Sarig","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102830","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102830","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Prescription drug insurance increasingly imposes prior authorization (requiring providers to request coverage before claim approval) to manage utilization. Prior authorization has been criticized because of its administrative burden on providers. The primary alternative to managing utilization is imposing out-of-pocket (OOP) payment to incentivize beneficiaries to seek lower-cost care, effectively providing beneficiaries with partial insurance. Would beneficiaries prefer indirectly paying for prior authorization through higher premiums; or would they prefer prior authorization was replaced by higher OOP costs? This tradeoff depends on how much OOP costs could be displaced by prior authorization, which depends on their relative impact on demand. I estimate the effect of prior authorization and OOP costs on pharmaceutical demand in Medicare Part D, addressing endogeneity caused by unobserved drug quality and selection into plans. Despite criticism of prior authorization, I find that Medicare beneficiaries would prefer higher premiums to pay for prior authorization, over higher OOP costs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135509934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How do hospitals respond to input regulation? Evidence from the California nurse staffing mandate","authors":"Chandni Raja","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102826","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102826","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Mandated minimum nurse-to-patient ratios have been the subject of active debate in the U.S. for over twenty years and are under legislative consideration today in several states and at the federal level. This paper uses the 1999 California nurse staffing mandate as an empirical setting to estimate the causal effects of minimum ratios on hospitals. Minimum ratios led to a 58 min increase in nursing time per patient day and 9 percent increase in the wage bill per patient day in the general medical/surgical acute care unit among treated hospitals. Hospitals responded on several margins: increased use of lower-licensed and younger nurses, reduced capacity by 16 beds (14 percent), and increased bed utilization rates by 0.045 points (8 percent). Using administrative data on discharges for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), I find a significant reduction in length of stay (5 percent) and no effect on the 30-day all-cause readmission rate. The null effect on readmissions suggests that length of stay declined not because hospitals were discharging AMI patients “quicker and sicker”, rather, AMI patients recovered more quickly due to an improvement in care quality per day.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71523164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do minimum wage laws affect employer-sponsored insurance provision?","authors":"Mark K. Meiselbach , Jean M. Abraham","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102825","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102825","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Employers may respond to minimum wage increases by adjusting their health benefits. We examine the impact of state minimum wage increases on employer health benefit offerings using the 2002–2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – Insurance/Employer Component data. Our primary regression specifications are difference-in-differences models that estimate the relationship between within-state changes in employer-sponsored insurance and minimum wage laws over time. We find that a $1 increase in minimum wages is associated with a 0.92 percentage point (p.p.) decrease in the percentage of employers offering health insurance, largely driven by small employers and employers with a greater share of low-wage employees. A $1 increase is also associated with a 1.83 p.p. increase in the prevalence of plans with a deductible requirement, but we do not find consistent evidence that other benefit characteristics are affected. We find no consequent change in uninsurance, likely explained by an increase in Medicaid enrollment.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66784537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Physician responses to Medicare reimbursement rates","authors":"Aileen M. Devlin , Grace McCormack","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102816","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper investigates how office-based physicians respond to Medicare reimbursement changes. Using variation from an Affordable Care Act policy that increased reimbursements for office-based care in four states, we use a triple difference analysis, comparing physicians with higher and lower reimbursement changes in treated states to similar physicians in untreated states. We find two mechanisms through which physicians respond. First, the reimbursement change affected integration—physicians with larger increases in office-based reimbursement were less likely to vertically integrate with hospitals and more likely to continue providing office-based care than physicians with smaller reimbursement increases. Second, we find some evidence that physicians who continued practicing in an office setting increased the volume of services provided.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49818513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does informal care delay nursing home entry? Evidence from Dutch linked survey and administrative data","authors":"Julien Bergeot , Marianne Tenand","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102831","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102831","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We assess whether informal care receipt affects the probability of transitioning to a nursing home. Available evidence derives from the US, where nursing home stays are often temporary. Exploiting linked survey and administrative data from the Netherlands, we use the gender mix of children to retrieve exogenous variation in informal care receipt. We find that informal care increases the chance of an admission within a three-year period for individuals with severe functional limitations, and increases the costs incurred on formal home care. For individuals with mild limitations, informal care substantially decreases total care costs, whereas its effect on nursing home admission is unclear. Further, informal care results in lower post-acute care use and hospital care costs, and does not increase mortality. Promoting informal care cannot be expected to systematically result in lower institutionalization rate and care costs, but it may nonetheless induce health benefits for its recipients.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016762962300108X/pdfft?md5=c7df85a62ec2bc3b237c22718e788523&pid=1-s2.0-S016762962300108X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71428602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The long-term effects of early-life pollution exposure: Evidence from the London smog","authors":"Stephanie von Hinke , Emil N. Sørensen","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102827","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102827","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper uses a large UK cohort to investigate the impact of early-life pollution exposure on individuals’ human capital and health outcomes in older age. We compare individuals who were exposed to the London smog in December 1952 whilst <em>in utero</em> or in infancy to those born after the smog and those born at the same time but in unaffected areas. We find that those exposed to the smog have substantially lower fluid intelligence and worse respiratory health, with some evidence of a reduction in years of schooling.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49693506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Philipp Barteska , Sonja Dobkowitz , Maarit Olkkola , Michael Rieser
{"title":"Mass vaccination and educational attainment: Evidence from the 1967–68 Measles Eradication Campaign","authors":"Philipp Barteska , Sonja Dobkowitz , Maarit Olkkola , Michael Rieser","doi":"10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102828","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We show that the first nationwide mass vaccination campaign against measles increased educational attainment in the United States. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in exposure to the childhood disease across states right before the Measles Eradication Campaign of 1967–68, which reduced reported measles incidence by 90 percent within two years. Our results suggest that mass vaccination against measles increased the years of education on average by about 0.1 years in the affected cohorts. We also find tentative evidence that the college graduation rate of men increased.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50186,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629623001054/pdfft?md5=cd5849e5547d5aeb208abaabbfef4791&pid=1-s2.0-S0167629623001054-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92099222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}