Ulf Gerdtham
Professor
Could Easier Access to University Improve Health and Reduce Health Inequalities?
Författare
Summary, in Swedish
This paper estimates the impact of university education on medical care use and its income related inequality. We do this by exploiting an arbitrary university eligibility rule in Sweden combined with regression discontinuity design for the years 2003-2013 for students who graduated 2003-2005. We find a clear jump in university attendance due to university eligibility. This jump coincides with a positive jump in prescriptions for contraceptives for females but also a positive jump in mental health related hospital admissions for males. Analysis of the inequality impact of tertiary eligibility finds no clear impact on medical care use by socioeconomic status of the parents. The results imply that easing access to university for the lower ability student will lead to an increase in contraceptive use without increasing its socioeconomic related inequality. At the same time, the results highlight that universities may need to do more to take care of the mental health of their least able students.
Avdelning/ar
- Hälsoekonomi
- Nationalekonomiska institutionen
- Centrum för ekonomisk demografi
- AgriFood Economics Centre, Ekonomihögskolan vid Lunds universitet
- EpiHealth: Epidemiology for Health
Publiceringsår
2018-03-13
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Working Papers
Issue
2018:5
Fulltext
Länkar
Dokumenttyp
Working paper
Förlag
Department of Economics, Lund University
Ämne
- Economics
Nyckelord
- Health returns to education, demand for medical care, causes of health inequality, Regression Discontinuity Design, Concentration Index
- Health returns to education
- demand for medical care
- causes of health inequality
- Regression Discontinuity Design
- Concentration Index
- I12
- I14
- I26
Status
Published
Forskningsgrupp
- Health Economics