28 research outputs found
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How does searching for health information on the Internet affect individuals' demand for health care services?
The emergence of the Internet made health information, which previously was almost exclusively available to health professionals, accessible to the general public. Access to health information on the Internet is likely to affect individuals' health care related decisions. The aim of this analysis is to determine how health information that people obtain from the Internet affects their demand for health care. I use a novel data set, the U.S. Health Information National Trends Survey (2003–07), to answer this question. The causal variable of interest is a binary variable that indicates whether or not an individual has recently searched for health information on the Internet. Health care utilization is measured by an individual's number of visits to a health professional in the past 12 months. An individual's decision to use the Internet to search for health information is likely to be correlated to other variables that can also affect his/her demand for health care. To separate the effect of Internet health information from other confounding variables, I control for a number of individual characteristics and use the instrumental variable estimation method. As an instrument for Internet health information, I use U.S. state telecommunication regulations that are shown to affect the supply of Internet services. I find that searching for health information on the Internet has a positive, relatively large, and statistically significant effect on an individual's demand for health care. This effect is larger for the individuals who search for health information online more frequently and people who have health care coverage. Among cancer patients, the effect of Internet health information seeking on health professional visits varies by how long ago they were diagnosed with cancer. Thus, the Internet is found to be a complement to formal health care rather than a substitute for health professional services
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The effects of old and new media on children's weight
Childhood obesity rates have recently been rising in many countries. It has been suggested in the literature that changes in children’s media exposure may contribute to explaining this trend. I investigate whether or not this hypothesis is supported by data. I contribute to the literature by focusing not only on television but also on new media – computers and video games. The Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used for the analysis. To address the endogeneity of children’s media exposure, I use dynamic and panel data models. This is another improvement upon the existing literature. Additionally, an extensive list of control variables is included in the regressions. I find that video game playing or computer use has no effect on children’s body weight. On the other hand, television viewing may increase children’s body weight slightly
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Macroeconomic Shocks, Job Security and Health: Evidence from the Mining Industry
How do exogenous changes in the macroeconomic environment affect workers’ perceived job security, and consequently, their mental and physical health? To answer this question, we exploit variation in world commodity prices over the period 2001-17 and analyse panel data that includes detailed classifications of mining workers. We find that commodity price increases cause increases in perceived job security, which in turn, significantly and substantively improve the mental health of workers. In contrast, we find no effects on physical health. Our results imply that the estimated welfare costs of recessions are much larger when the effects of job insecurity, and not only unemployment, are considered
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Does early schooling narrow outcome gaps for advantaged and disadvantaged children?
This paper explores how starting school at a younger age affects the developmental score gaps between relatively advantaged and disadvantaged children. While previous findings suggest that delaying school entry may improve school readiness, less is known about whether it has differential effects for advantaged and disadvantaged children. For disadvantaged children, starting school early may be a better alternative to staying at home for longer as school provides a more stable and educational environment than the family home, overcompensating for the penalties of starting school early. This may be less applicable to relatively advantaged children who generally have greater access to resources in the home and who are more likely to utilise formal pre-school services. We use the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children to investigate if there is support for this hypothesis. The endogeneity of school starting age is addressed using the regression discontinuity design. We find that an early school start generally improves children’s cognitive skills, which is even more pronounced for disadvantaged children. In contrast, an early school start tends to negatively affect children’s non-cognitive skills with both advantaged and disadvantaged children affected in similar ways. Thus, our findings suggest that an earlier school entry may narrow the gaps in cognitive skills, whereas the gaps in non-cognitive skills are not affected by the school starting age
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Psychological Costs of Migration: Home Country Natural Disasters and Mental Health
The psychological toll of leaving one's familiar environment is a dominant explanation for why some people do not migrate despite relatively high wage differentials and low monetary costs of moving. Yet there is little direct empirical evidence on the existence and the characteristics of psychic costs. Using linked administrative and survey data (the 45 and Up Study) from Australia, a country where one in four residents was born overseas, we show that migrant mental health is significantly affected by home country natural disasters. In the three months following a disaster, mental health related drug use and visits to mental health specialists increase by 5% and 33%, respectively. The effects persist for up to 12 months after the initial shock and increase with distance to the home country. In contrast, we do not find any effects of home country disasters on the physical health conditions of migrants. Given that individuals in our sample have lived in their destination country for an average of 40 years, our estimates suggest strong persistence in these costs
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Justification bias in self-reported disability: New evidence from panel data
The relationship between health and work is frequently investigated using self-assessments of disability from social surveys. The complication is that respondents may overstate their level of disability to justify non-employment and welfare receipt. This study provides new evidence on the existence and magnitude of justification bias by exploiting a novel feature of a large longitudinal survey: each wave respondents are asked identical disability questions twice; near the beginning and end of the face-to-face interview. Prior to answering the second disability question, respondents are asked a series of questions that increase the salience of their employment and welfare circumstances. Justification bias is identified by comparing the variation between the two measures within-individuals over time, with the variation in employment status over time. Results indicate substantial and statistically significant justification bias; especially for men and women who receive disability pensions
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Mental health stigma
Comparing self-reports to administrative records, we find that survey respondents are significantly more likely to under-report mental illnesses compared to other health conditions. This behavior is consistent with the existence of stigma of mental illnesses. We show that stigma can play a role in determining health-seeking behavior
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Is it only a game? Video games and violence
Popular media often links violent video games to real-life violence, although there is limited evidence to support this link. I analyze how adolescent boys' violent behavior is affected by the releases of new violent video games in the U.S. Variation in children's exposure to the releases comes from variation in video game release and interview dates and thus is plausibly exogenous. I find that child reported
violence against other people, in fact, decreases after a new violent video game is released. Thus, policies that place restrictions on video game sales to minors are unlikely to reduce violence
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Does self-assessed health measure health?
Despite concerns about reporting biases and interpretation, self-assessed health (SAH) remains the measure of health most used by researchers, in part reflecting its ease of collection and in part the observed correlation between SAH and objective measures of health. Using a unique Australian data set, which consists of survey data linked to administrative individual medical records, we present empirical evidence demonstrating that SAH indeed predicts future health, as measured by hospitalizations, out-of-hospital medical services and prescription drugs. Our large sample size allows very disaggregate analysis and we find that SAH predicts more serious, chronic illnesses better than less serious illnesses. Finally, we compare the predictive power of SAH relative to administrative data and an extensive set of self-reported health measures; SAH does not add to the predictive power of future utilization when the administrative data is included and improves prediction only marginally when the extensive survey-based health measures are included. Clearly there is value in the more extensive survey and administrative health data as well as greater cost of collection
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Who provides inconsistent reports of their health status? The importance of age, cognitive ability and socioeconomic status
Self-assessed health (SAH) measures are widely used in models of health and health inequalities. Such models assume that SAH is a reliable measure of health status. We utilise a unique feature of a national longitudinal survey to examine the consistency of responses to a standard SAH question that is asked twice to the same individual in close temporal proximity in up to three waves (2001, 2009, and 2013). In particular, we analyse whether the consistency of responses varies with personal characteristics. The main analysis sample includes 18,834 individual-year observations. We find that 57% of respondents provide inconsistent reports at least once. Characteristics that are associated with significantly higher inconsistencies are age, education, cognitive ability, and time between responses. The results suggest that there are systematic differences in the ability of individuals' to self-evaluate and summarise their own health. Consequently, failure to account for such error may lead to large estimation biases in models of health outcomes, particularly with respect to the relationship between education, cognitive ability, and health