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来源类型 | Working Paper |
规范类型 | 报告 |
DOI | 10.3386/w17937 |
来源ID | Working Paper 17937 |
Is There \"Too Much\" Inequality in Health Spending Across Income Groups? | |
Laurence Ales; Roozbeh Hosseini; Larry E. Jones | |
发表日期 | 2012-03-29 |
出版年 | 2012 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | In this paper we study the efficient allocation of health resources across individuals. We focus on the relation between health resources and income (taken as a proxy for productivity). In particular we determine the efficient level of the health care social safety net for the indigent. We assume that individuals have different life cycle profiles of productivity. Health care increases survival probability. We adopt the classical approach of welfare economics by considering how a central planner with an egalitarian (ex-ante) perspective would allocate resources. We show that, under the efficient allocation, health care spending increases with labor productivity, but only during the working years. Post retirement, everyone would get the same health care. Quantitatively, we find that the amount of inequality across the income distribution in the data is larger that what would be justified solely on the basis of production efficiency, but not drastically so. As a rough summary, in U.S. data top to bottom spending ratios are about 1.5 for most of the life cycle. Efficiency implies a decline from about 2 (at age 25) to 1 at retirement. We find larger inefficiencies in the lower part of the income distribution and in post retirement ages. |
主题 | Public Economics ; Public Goods ; National Fiscal Issues ; Health, Education, and Welfare ; Health ; Poverty and Wellbeing |
URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w17937 |
来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
引用统计 | |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/575613 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Laurence Ales,Roozbeh Hosseini,Larry E. Jones. Is There \"Too Much\" Inequality in Health Spending Across Income Groups?. 2012. |
条目包含的文件 | ||||||
文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
w17937.pdf(802KB) | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 |
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