Changing the way the elderly live: Evidence from the home health care market in the United States

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Orsini, Chiara
• 署名单位: Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.10.010
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 142-152
• 关键词: Home health care; medicare; Living arrangements of the elderly

摘要

I examine how decreases in government coverage of home health care visits to the elderly in the United States have affected their living arrangements Specifically. I exploit geographic variation in the Medicare Home Health Care reimbursement rate that arose as a result of legislation passed in 1997 and I identify its impact Oil the living arrangements of older Medicare beneficiaries I find that less generous reimbursement policies lead to a greater fraction of elderly giving up independent living Baseline-model estimates Suggest that a decline in reimbursement of one visit per user leads to a 0.98% increase in the fraction of elderly Medicare beneficiaries living in shared living arrangements. that is, living with somebody else, rather than alone or with only the spouse This estimate implies that a decline in reimbursement of 5 1 visits per Medicare beneficiary increases the fraction of elderly that live in shared living arrangements by 1 12 percentage Points. Such an increase is consistent with the time-series increase in the fraction of elderly that live in shared living arrangements between 1997 and 2000 (C) 2009 Elsevier B V All rights reserved