TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dow,William H.
AU  - Gonzalez,Kristine A.
AU  - Rosero-Bixby,Luis
TI  - Aggregation and Insurance Mortality Estimation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9827
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9827
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9827.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
William H. Dow
University of California, Berkeley
School of Public Health
239 University Hall, #7360
Berkeley, CA 94720-7360
Tel: 510/643-5439
Fax: 510/643-6981
E-Mail: wdow@berkeley.edu
AB  - One goal of government health insurance programs is to improve health, yet little is known empirically about how important such government interventions can be in explaining health transitions. We analyze the child mortality effects of a major health insurance expansion in Costa Rica. In contrast to previous work in this area that has used aggregated ecological designs, we exploit census data to estimate individual-level models. Theoretical and empirical econometric results indicate that aggregation can introduce substantial upward biases in the insurance effects. Overall we find a statistically significant but quite small effect of health insurance on child mortality in Costa Rica.
ER  -