Determinants of out-of-pocket health expenditure on children: an analysis of the 2004 Pelotas Birth Cohort

International Journal for Equity in Health

Research

Alicia Matijasevich¹  Paulo de Andrade Jacinto²  Iná S. Santos³  Aluísio J. D. Barros³  Andréa D. Bertoldi³  Cesar Augusto Oviedo Tejada⁴  Marcelo Torres da Silva⁴ 

[1] Departamento de Medicina Preventiva, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil;Programa de Pós-Graduação em Economia do Desenvolvimento, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil;Programa de Pós-Graduação em Epidemiologia, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil;Programa de Pós-Graduação em Organizações e Mercados, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Rua Gomes Carneiro 1, 96010-610, Pelotas, RS, Brazil;

关键词: Determinants;    Health expenditure;    Children;    Health economics;    Inequality;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12939-015-0180-0

 received in 2014-11-20, accepted in 2015-05-18,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe present study aimed to examine the impact of socioeconomic, demographic, and health status-related factors on out-of-pocket expenditure on health care for children.MethodsData were obtained from a birth cohort study conducted in the city of Pelotas, state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), southern Brazil, in 2004. The final sample is a result of adjusts made in order to keep in the analysis only those that attended to 3 follow-ups (at 12, 24 and 48 months of age). Estimates were carried out using the Panel Data Tobit Model with random effects.ResultsThe study showed that expenditure on medicines was 20 % less likely in those considered healthy children by their mothers and, if there was any expenditure with healthy children, the expected expenditure was reduced by 58 %. A 1 % increase in household income increased the expected expenditure on medicines by 16 %, and by 23 % in children with private health insurance coverage.ConclusionsAll types of health care expenditures examined were higher for children covered by private health insurance. Although total health care expenditure was higher for children of better-off families, it represented a lower share of these families’ income evidencing income inequality in health care expenditures.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© da Silva et al. 2015. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.