Partial mean and inequality effects on catastrophic health payments: methods with application to Malawi

Mussa, Richard (2015): Partial mean and inequality effects on catastrophic health payments: methods with application to Malawi.

Abstract

This paper develops distribution-sensitive partial mean effects of determinants of out-of-pocket (OOP) catastrophic health payments. It also proposes methods that can be used to measure how changes in the distribution of the correlates of catastrophic health payments affect the incidence of catastrophic health payments; an inequality effect. The proposed methods are then applied to Malawian data from the Third Integrated Household Survey. The empirical application shows that a failure to account for these inequalities in the correlates, at least normatively, leads to a mismeasurement of the magnitudes of their partial effects. The results also indicate that the signs of the combined effects of a ceteris paribus unit increase in the mean and inequality effects are mixed; for some variables the inequality effect dominates the mean effect while for other variables a reverse pattern is observed.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Mean effect; inequality effect; Malawi
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I14 - Health and Inequality

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