TY - JOUR
T1 - Economic and psychological effects of health insurance and cash transfers
T2 - Evidence from a randomized experiment in Kenya
AU - Haushofer, Johannes
AU - Chemin, Matthieu
AU - Jang, Chaning
AU - Abraham, Justin
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the study participants for generously giving their time. We thank Marie Collins, Faizan Diwan, Bena Mwongeli, Joseph Njoroge, James Vancel, and Matthew White for excellent research assistance; the Cooperative Insurance Company, Tavneet Suri, and Joost de Laat for fruitful collaboration; Innovations for Poverty Action for research support; and Abhijit Banerjee, Fenella Carpena, Esther Duflo, Simon Galle, Alexis Grigorieff, Michael Kremer, Michala Iben Riis-Vestergaard, Chris Roth, Simone Schaner, Jeremy Shapiro, and Tom Vogl for comments and discussion. All errors are our own. This study was pre-registered with the AEA RCT Registry (AEARCTR-0000647). This research was supported by NIH Grant R01AG039297 and Cogito Foundation Grant R-116/10 to Johannes Haushofer. IRB approval was obtained.
Funding Information:
We are grateful to the study participants for generously giving their time. We thank Marie Collins, Faizan Diwan, Bena Mwongeli, Joseph Njoroge, James Vancel, and Matthew White for excellent research assistance; the Cooperative Insurance Company, Tavneet Suri, and Joost de Laat for fruitful collaboration; Innovations for Poverty Action for research support; and Abhijit Banerjee, Fenella Carpena, Esther Duflo, Simon Galle, Alexis Grigorieff, Michael Kremer, Michala Iben Riis-Vestergaard, Chris Roth, Simone Schaner, Jeremy Shapiro, and Tom Vogl for comments and discussion. All errors are our own. This study was pre-registered with the AEA RCT Registry (AEARCTR-0000647). This research was supported by NIH Grant R01AG039297 and Cogito Foundation Grant R-116/10 to Johannes Haushofer. IRB approval was obtained.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019
PY - 2020/5
Y1 - 2020/5
N2 - We use a randomized experiment in Nairobi to compare the effect of free health insurance to an unconditional cash transfer of the same value and a control group. Despite high baseline rates of injury and illness, the median insurance taker does not use the insurance. We observe no significant effects of either insurance or cash on economic outcomes, self-reported health, and healthcare utilization. We find some evidence that the provision of health insurance reduced levels of self-reported stress and the stress hormone cortisol relative to cash and control. This result suggests that insurance may have a “peace of mind” effect, although the most conservative bounds for attrition and multiple inference correction render it statistically insignificant. Together, our results suggest that health insurance may reduce stress in our setting, but its benefits are otherwise limited.
AB - We use a randomized experiment in Nairobi to compare the effect of free health insurance to an unconditional cash transfer of the same value and a control group. Despite high baseline rates of injury and illness, the median insurance taker does not use the insurance. We observe no significant effects of either insurance or cash on economic outcomes, self-reported health, and healthcare utilization. We find some evidence that the provision of health insurance reduced levels of self-reported stress and the stress hormone cortisol relative to cash and control. This result suggests that insurance may have a “peace of mind” effect, although the most conservative bounds for attrition and multiple inference correction render it statistically insignificant. Together, our results suggest that health insurance may reduce stress in our setting, but its benefits are otherwise limited.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078669206&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85078669206&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102416
DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102416
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078669206
SN - 0304-3878
VL - 144
JO - Journal of Development of Economics
JF - Journal of Development of Economics
M1 - 102416
ER -