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Health care quality, economic inequality, and precautionary saving
Author(s) -
Jappelli Tullio,
Pistaferri Luigi,
Weber Guglielmo
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.1172
Subject(s) - inequality , economics , public economics , health care , economic inequality , quality (philosophy) , health equity , exploit , precautionary savings , public health , economic growth , medicine , macroeconomics , computer science , mathematical analysis , philosophy , mathematics , computer security , epistemology , recession , nursing
We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behavior. We exploit district‐wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality and precautionary saving. We find that in lower quality districts there is greater income and health dispersion and higher precautionary saving. The analysis carries important insights for the ongoing debate about the validity of the life‐cycle model and interesting policy implications for the design of health care systems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.