Health Economics Commons^™

The Impact Of Medicare Part D On Mortality And Financial Stability, Katherine Toran

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Using the Health and Retirement Study Panel core files from 1996 to 2014, I analyze how Medicare Part D impacted access to prescription drug coverage by various demographic factors such as race, gender, and income. In Chapter 1, I find the highest take-up rates for those who were white, female, and with higher incomes. However, increases in coverage were high across the board, such that Medicare Part D also improved drug insurance coverage for those who were black, male, and with lower income. Thus, although Medicare Part D did increase prescription drug insurance coverage for seniors across the board, I …

Water And Life. A Cross-Sectional Study On Determinants Of Beverage Consumption And Water Access In One Tribal Community, Christina White

All Master's Theses

Increasingly, poor diet has been shown to be one of the most crucial factors associated with cause of death, even more critical than smoking. Research in the past two decades has consistently linked increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) to the obesity epidemic contributing to a public health crisis all over the United States. Native Americans, among other minority groups, suffer obesity disproportionately from the rest of the US population, yet they continually fail to be included in research on the subject. Traditional research methods, sparse care coverage on reservations, consolidation of unique tribes into one classification, and failure to …

A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Livelihood, Environmental And Health Benefits Of A Large Scale, Christina K. Barstow, Randall Bluffstone, Kyle Silon, Karl Linden, Evan Thomas

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Public health interventions targeting contaminated drinking water and indoor air pollution may help to reduce two of the leading causes of death among children under 5 in Rwanda - diarrhea and pneumonia. These interventions also have the potential to provide economic benefits, including reduction in expenditures on fuelwood and time spent on fuelwood collection, environmental benefits through reductions in deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, and additional economic benefits attributable to health impacts. We evaluate one such large scale intervention, the Tubeho Neza program in Western Rwanda using a cost-benefit analysis. This paper estimates monetized program benefits related to fuelwood savings, …

Three Essays On Utilizing Spatial Econometrics In Natural Resource Economics Related To Water, Health, And Energy, Elham Erfanian

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Spatial interaction and the locational structure between observations have recently gained more attention in the field of econometrics for both cross-sectional and panel data analyses. Compared to a non-spatial economic model, a spatial model relaxes the assumption of independency in observations. This research will apply spatial econometrics modeling in three different fields in applied economics: 1) water charge and minimum monthly access charge in West Virginia municipalities, 2) Naloxone access law and opioid overdose deaths among the U.S. states, and 3) ��2.5 concentrations and asthma hospitalizations in Pennsylvania counties. Based on the nature of water resource imposing spillovers in water …

Sunshine, Fertility And Racial Disparities, Karen Smith Conway, Jennifer Trudeau

WCBT Faculty Publications

This research investigates the effect of sun exposure on fertility, with a special focus on how its effects and consequences for birth outcomes may differ by race. Sun exposure is a key mechanism for obtaining Vitamin D, but this process is inhibited by skin pigmentation. Vitamin D has been linked to male and female fertility and risk of miscarriage, and Vitamin D deficiency is more prevalent among blacks than whites. Using 1989–2004 individual live births data from the Natality Detail Files, county-level, monthly conceptions are estimated as a function of monthly solar insolation, temperature and humidity, as well as month, …

Patient-Centered Medical Homes And Hospital Value-Based Purchasing: Investigating Provider Responses To Incentives, Lauryn Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Provider incentives are a commonly used policy tool to mold provider behaviors.¹ However, while we frequently measure the change in patient outcomes, failure to consistently produce changes in outcomes does not mean that providers are not changing their behavior. This paper focuses on two programs with null or inconsistent quality outcomes to try to identify why such inconsistency occurs. The two programs, both ratified in the Affordable Care Act, are 1) patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), and 2) the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program.

Chapter 1: Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel survey (MEPS), I match provider characteristic …

Selective Mortality And Malnutrition In India, Pallavi Panda

School of Business

India presents itself as a paradox with low infant mortality and high malnutrition. This paper provides survival bias as an explanation of the paradox. Using pooled health surveys from 1993 to 2005 and a pseudo-panel selection model, this study finds that the change in Height-for-Age Z-Scores (HAZ scores) can be explained by mortality selection. Specifically, children with sample average characteristics that survive have 17.4% less HAZ scores than a child randomly drawn from the population indicating an overestimation of malnutrition in India. This is consistent with the hypothesis of weaker children surviving due to skilled delivery which pulls down the …

The Effects Of Health Care Expenditures On Health Outcomes In West Africa: Analysis Of Selected 14 Countries From 2000 To 2018, Oluwaseun Kilanko

Masters Theses

This study has examined the impact of health expenditure on health outcomes in the selected West African countries. The health outcomes used in this study are infant mortality, under-five mortality, and maternal mortality rates. A panel data set for 14 countries for the period 2000‒2018 was used. Aside from examining the role of total health expenditure on the health outcomes, we examine whether public and private healthcare expenditure could have dissimilar health outcomes. This research used panel data estimation method. Panel data has some advantages over the cross sectional analysis and time series analysis in the sense that it controls …

Three Essays In Applied Econometrics, Collin Dean Hodges

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The body of work presented here consists of a collection of research projects developed during my time as a graduate student at West Virginia University. As will soon become apparent, this collection of research topics is quite eclectic. This is, in part, due to the to the nature of the research process itself--where one often begins by asking one question and ends by answering a completely different one--but also due to the fact that my time at West Virginia University has provided me the opportunity to gain insight into a wide variety of economic fields as well as work on …

The Impact Of Family Structure And Family Income On Child Physical Health In China, Baode Zhao

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The purpose of this article is to study the relationship between child health and family income and family structure. The main use of the Height-for-Age Z score (HAZ) indicator and whether the child has been sick in the past four weeks (Ill) is used as an indicator to measure children's physical health. The main explanatory variables are family income and family structure. In terms of family structure, we mainly focus on the special group of single-parent families. In addition, it also explores other factors that affect children's health, such as demographic factors, sociological factors, and economic factors. This research will …

Parental And Peer Influence On Adolescent Smoking In Vietnam, Duong Hai Yen

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

To estimate the magnitude of the association between parent and peer influences on adolescent smoking as non-; light-; and heavy current smokers. By using data from 18,912 adolescents, ages from 13 to 15 years, from two years 2007 and 2014 of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey in Vietnam, were selected for these analyses. Data collected included measures for the smoking status of the adolescent and their parents and friends. Descriptive analysis was used to describe the characteristics of each individual variable. After that, the ordered logistic regression was applied to estimate the relationship between smoking behaviour of parents and peer, …

Association Between Retirement Status, Savings And Geriatric Depression In China, Fangyi Ren

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Against the background of an aging population and a mandatory retirement policy at relatively young ages in China, mental health problems of the retired elderly have attracted more and more attention. Yet, only a few studies have looked at the association between retirement status, savings and geriatric depression in China. Using data from the CHARLS (China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study) 2015 Wave, this thesis aims to find the association between retirement status, savings and geriatric depression of those aged 45 and above, controlling for other factors such as socioeconomic status, risky health behavior, physical health status, debt, and health …

The Impact Of Economic Development On Health : A Country-Level Analysis, Huiying Wang

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study investigates the impact of economic development on health, using a panel of 217 countries (139 high-income and 78 low-income countries for the period 1995-2018). Five dependent variables are included, which are life expectancy at birth, infant mortality, under-5 mortality, survival to age 65 for the female and the male population. The preferred regression method used is fixed effects - two stage least squares modeling (FE-2SLS). The specification includes two measures of economic development, including GDP per capita and the Gini index, as well as other macro-level variables that have been identified as important determinants for population health in …

Poverty And Corruption As Determinants Of Global Antimicrobial Resistance, Lyvia Ann Sanders Guerrier De Dumast

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Antimicrobial resistance is a major threat to global public health and is believed to cause over 700,000 deaths per year. Efforts to tackle this problem have tended to focus on reducing antibiotic consumption and promoting the appropriate use of medicines. This study examines the relative importance of other socio-economic factors, more specifically poverty (Gross National Income per capita) and corruption (measured by quality of governance), in determining antibiotic resistance compared to use of antibiotics. Using panel data of 48 countries in 2008-2017, a fixed-effects multivariate analysis was used. Sobel tests and mediation analyses were also carried out to determine the …

Mental Health And Employment Status : Evidence From Thailand, Patchara Suwannasin

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Mental health and mental disorder are significantly considered to be a worldwide issue nowadays such as depression and suicidal. Moreover, the problem of employment still occurs as an aspect of unemployment or employment status issues in those people who work in each economic sector. The objective of the study was to assess the impact of employment status on mental health and to investigate the relationship between personal characteristics and mental health in Thailand. Moreover, the channels that employment may affect mental health also were investigated in this study. A cross-sectional data, 2014 Thailand survey on conditions of society, culture, and …

Determinants Of Healthcare Utilization And Out-Of-Pocket Expenditure In Thailand, Piraya Saichol

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Thailand launched the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS) in 2001 and most studies are focusing on the impact of the UCS on healthcare utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure. None of the studies, however, examines healthcare utilization and OOP expenditure across the three main public health insurance schemes, i.e. UCS, Social Security Scheme (SSS), and Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme (CSMBS). Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of health insurance status and use of health insurance on outpatient service utilization and healthcare OOP expenditure by using the 2017 Health and Welfare Survey data. Given large income and other disparities across …

The Health Impacts Of Groundwater Salinity Among Household Members With Different Wealth Indexes In Coastal Bangladesh, Shayan Ara Amin

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Individual and household level health impacts are related to their wealth, a connection that expands into impacts from drinking water quality. Using the Bangladesh Poverty and Groundwater Salinity Survey 2016, this study examines the relationship of self-reported groundwater salinity on self-reported health impacts that are common symptoms of hypertension among individuals for an association with household-level wealth quintiles. This study is unique in substantiating the health-wealth relationship for the climate-change vulnerable people of southwest coastal Bangladesh, where so far studies on the impact of drinking water salinity have focused on direct health impacts and willingness-to-pay for drinking water and healthcare. …

The Relationship Between Social Participation And Smoking Among Middle-Aged And Elderly Persons In China, Yuqing Liu

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study examined the relationship between social participation and smoking among middle-aged and elderly persons. This study used a secondary dataset drawn from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS,2015). In this nationally survey, the number of observations was 9,876. The dependent variable used in this study is smoking and non-smoking. Smoking includes light smoking, moderate, and heavy smoking. The explanatory variables are family factors, demographic characteristics, and socioeconomic factors. Factors associated with smoking were examined with logistic regression model. The results showed that gender, marital status, health self-assessment, pension, chronic disease, playing Mahjong, playing chess, playing cards, or …

The Relationship Between Commuting Habits And Mortality Rates In The United States, Samuel Earl Supplee-Niederman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In recent years, policy makers have invested in public transportation and infrastructure to promote walking and cycling to work. There is also a large body of economic research that has found mortality rates increase during economic expansions. While there has been a number of epidemiological studies that investigate the impact of commuting mode choice on individual health outcomes, there is a lack of research on the aggregate health effects of alternative transportation methods, such as biking, walking, or using public transportation. This paper uses a fixed-effect model to investigate the impact of an increase in total employment on mortality rates, …

A Pilot Study On Adolescent Mobile Phone Use, Indirect Mental Health Costs And Cultural Context Considerations – Report, Siobhan K. Yilmaz, Alok Bohara

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Adolescents are being recognized as a generation, worldwide, that require different policy approaches to improve their health and wellbeing, including the adoption of mobile based health interventions (e.g. mHealth). While mHealth interventions are growing in popularity, many researchers/policy-makers have neglected assessing potential (indirect) costs/negative consequences from their use. Evidence from the developed world shows strong associations between cell phone use and negative mental health outcomes, but such findings are minimal in developing world contexts. Using primary data from a large-scale, school-based survey of 17-19-year-old adolescents in southwestern Nepal, this report provides background information to motivate additional work investigating the presence …