Disparities in Access to Health Insurance and Workers’ Compensation Benefit between Non-Contingent and Contingent Farm Workers in U.S. Agriculture

The share of contingent employment has increased significantly in the last two decades. Not much is known about the impact of this shift on disparities in access to health insurance and other benefits. I examined disparities in access to any type of health insurance, employer-sponsored health insurance and workers’ compensation (WC) benefits between contingent and non-contingent workers in U.S. agriculture. I used the National Agricultural Workers Survey and the extended Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique to estimate disparities. Contingent employment could be a barrier to access of health insurance and WC benefit, which in turn could contribute to health inequalities in the long-run

Supermarket purchases and the dietary patterns of households in Guatemala:

"Very limited empirical analyses are done on evaluating how changes in the retail environment affect diet and health status of consumers, especially in developing countries. The major objective of this study is to shed some light on some of these neglected but crucial issues. The study examines the impact of supermarket purchases on dietary practices (defined as the calorie share of different food groups) of Guatemalan households using the 2000 Guatemalan household survey. I use an instrumental variable method to take into account the potential endogeneity of the supermarket-purchase variable in the calorie share equations.... The results of the study reveal that supermarket purchases increase the share that highly and partially processed food items, such as pastries, cookies, crackers, chocolate, ice cream, and so forth, make of total calories, at the expense of staple food items such as corn and beans. Since most processed foods contain disproportionately high amounts of added fat, sugar, and salt, and since supermarkets are expanding rapidly, different policy measures should be developed to ensure that supermarkets have a "healthier" impact on diets." from Authors' AbstractSupermarkets, Health and nutrition, Calorie share, Diet quality, Staple foods, Household behavior, Processed foods, Energy dense foods, Energy dilute foods, Instrumental variable method,

Intra-household Gender Disparities in Childrens Medical Care before Death in India

The excess female mortality in India and other South Asian countries is no longer contentious. Less known are the reasons for such excess female mortality in the country. In this study, we argue that intra-household gender-discrimination in receipt of medical attention can be one of the most important factors for the unbalanced sex ratio in the country. The 52nd Indian National Sample Survey, which collected for the first time detailed verbal autopsies of deceased persons, is used in the analysis. Place of death, which indicates whether a person get medical help immediately before her/his death, is used as a health indicator variable. The multinomial logit results show that keeping all other factors constant, girls are 1.7 percent less likely to die in hospital than their brothers. The coefficients of different interaction variables also reveal that the probability of infant and very young girls with live female siblings to die in hospital is extremely low. The robustness of the results is also checked using different indicators. The results confirm that girls are highly discriminated in access to hospital treatment and in the number of times being hospitalized before their death compared to boys. Therefore, in addition to the current effort of the government to control sex-selective abortions, efforts should be made to reduce the current intra-household gender-disparities in getting medical care at least for life threatening illnesses. --gender discrimination,access to health care,place of death,India

Intrahousehold Health Care Financing Strategy and the Gender Gap: Empirical Evidence from India

The “missing women” dilemma in India has sparked interest in investigating gender discrimination in the provision of health care in the country. No studies, however, have directly examined this discrimination in relation to household behavior in health care financing. We hypothesize that households who face tight budget constraints are more likely to spend their meager resources on hospitalization of boys rather than girls. We use the 60th Indian National Sample Survey and a multinomial logit model to test this hypothesis and to shed some light on this important but overlooked issue. The results reveal that while the gap in the probability of boys’ and girls’ hospitalization and usage of household income and savings is relatively small, the gender gap in the probability of hospitalization and usage of scarce resources is very high. Ceteris paribus, the probability of boys to be hospitalized by financing from relatively scarce sources such as borrowing, sale of assets, help from friends, etc., is much higher than that of girls. Moreover, the results indicate that the gender gap deepens as we move from the richest to poorest households.gender discrimination, health care finance, hospitalization, India

Intrahousehold health care financing strategy and the gender gap: Empirical evidence from India

The 'missing women' dilemma in India has sparked interest in investigating gender discrimination in the provision of health care in the country. No studies, however, have directly examined this discrimination in relation to household behavior in health care financing. We hypothesize that households who face tight budget constraints are more likely to spend their meager resources on hospitalization of boys rather than girls. We use the 60th Indian National Sample Survey and a multinomial logit model to test this hypothesis and to shed some light on this important but overlooked issue. The results reveal that while the gap in the probability of boys' and girls' hospitalization and usage of household income and savings is relatively small, the gender gap in the probability of hospitalization and usage of scarce resources is very high. Ceteris paribus, the probability of boys to be hospitalized by financing from relatively scarce sources such as borrowing, sale of assets, help from friends, etc., is much higher than that of girls. Moreover, the results indicate that the gender gap deepens as we move from the richest to poorest households

Phenotypic Variability for Root Traits in Andean Common Beans Grown with and without Aluminum Stress Conditions

Genetic variation in wild relatives, GenBank accessions, landraces, and cultivars can unlock key alleles for the traits of interest for breeding programs. Breeding programs often utilize different strategies to quantify the source of heritable variation for target traits. One neglected area of study is the root traits of diverse genotypes, and this is especially the case for aluminum toxicity effects on legumes such as the common bean, which is the most used pulse for direct human consumption. This study evaluated 267 genotypes of common bean that were part of the global Andean Diversity Panel (ADP), consisting mainly of genotypes assembled from public and private breeding programs in Africa and North America, as well as elite lines and land races from the USDA. The ADP was evaluated for root traits at the seedling stage in the Tennessee State University (TSU) greenhouse using a hydroponic system with a standard nutrient solution with and without aluminum (Al). The recorded data on the roots per trial were fit to a linear mixed model for the analysis of variance in order to test for the genotype differences. Adjusted means considered replication and blocks within replication as random effects and genotypes as fixed effects. These were then used for Pearson correlation tests and for principal component analysis (PCA), where the first two vectors accounted for 94.5% and 93% of the explained variation under the control and Al-treatment conditions, respectively. Genotypes were clustered based on the morphology of roots in response to Al-toxicity treatment using the Euclidean distance and Ward’s hierarchical agglomerative clustering method, identifying four distinctive groups significant at p \u3c 0.01. The intra-cluster distance was lower than the inter-cluster distances, which indicated a heterogeneous and homogeneous nature between and within clusters, respectively. The results suggest that crossing between accessions from two of the clusters would result in the maximum genetic segregation. One cluster was found to have a higher Al-toxicity tolerance than the others

Impacts of community health insurance schemes on health care provision in rural Tanzania

In 1996 the Tanzanian government initiated community health insurance schemes to improve the access to health care and to protect people against the financial cost of illness in an environment with shrinking budgets for the health sector. This study aims to evaluate the role of the community health funds (CHF) in lowering the barriers to access health care. Three important results emerge from this study: First, the results show that income is amongst the most important factors determining household participation in the schemes. This means that despite exemption mechanisms, the poorest of the poor within the society are not reached as they can not afford to pay regular insurance premiums. Secondly, though we find no significant differences between members and non-members in the overall amount of health expenditure and in the use of preventive measures, sick individuals in member households were 15 percentage points more likely to get treatment than those in non-member households. Hence, being insured leads to an increase in the effective demand for health care. Third, the analysis reveals that members of the CHF are better financially protected against health shocks than non members. The result of this work provides further evidence of the important role that micro insurance schemes can play in the risk management of people in developing countries

Impacts of community health insurance schemes on health care provision in rural Tanzania

In 1996 the Tanzanian government initiated community health insurance schemes to improve the access to health care and to protect people against the financial cost of illness in an environment with shrinking budgets for the health sector. This study aims to evaluate the role of the community health funds (CHF) in lowering the barriers to access health care. Three important results emerge from this study: First, the results show that income is amongst the most important factors determining household participation in the schemes. This means that despite exemption mechanisms, the poorest of the poor within the society are not reached as they can not afford to pay regular insurance premiums. Secondly, though we find no significant differences between members and non-members in the overall amount of health expenditure and in the use of preventive measures, sick individuals in member households were 15 percentage points more likely to get treatment than those in non-member households. Hence, being insured leads to an increase in the effective demand for health care. Third, the analysis reveals that members of the CHF are better financially protected against health shocks than non members. The result of this work provides further evidence of the important role that micro insurance schemes can play in the risk management of people in developing countries

Modeling the impact of fiscal decentralization on health outcomes : empirical evidence from India

Over the last two decades, many countries around the world have been enthusiastically embarking on the path of decentralization. Decentralization has been advocated as a powerful means to improve the provision of health care services and health outcomes in developing countries. However, due to a preconceived idea that decentralization will result in efficient allocation of public resources and lack of an analytical framework to systematically analyze its impact on health outcomes, very little empirical works have been done in this area. Scant attention has also been given to analyze factors enabling or constraining its outcomes. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model and use it to test empirically the impact of fiscal decentralization on rural infant mortality rates in India between 1990 and 1997. The random effect regression results show that fiscal decentralization plays a statistically significant role in reducing rural infant mortality rate in India and the results are robust to the way the decentralization variable is measured and to different model specifications. The results also show that the effectiveness of fiscal decentralization can be affected by other complementary factors such as the level of political decentralization. States who have good fiscal and political decentralization index are twice more effective in reducing infant mortality rates than states with high fiscal but low political decentralization index.Während der letzten beiden Jahrzehnte sind viele Länder mit Enthusiasmus den Weg der Dezentralisierung gegangen. Dezentralisierung wurde als ein wichtiges Instrument zur Verbesserung der Bereitstellung von Leistungen der Gesundheitsfürsorge angesehen. Da man jedoch von der Vorstellung ausging, dass Dezentralisierung automatisch zu effizienter Verteilung von öffentlichen Ressourcen führt, und da ein analytischer Rahmen zur Untersuchung der Auswirkungen von Dezentralisierung auf die Gesundheit fehlte, gab es bisher nur wenige empirische Untersuchungen auf diesem Gebiet. Ebenfalls nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit wurde der Analyse von Faktoren geschenkt, die sich positiv oder negativ auf das Ergebnis von Dezentralisierung auswirken können. In diesem Artikel entwickeln wir ein theoretisches Modell, um den Einfluss von fiskalischer Dezentralisierung auf die ländliche Kindersterblichkeit in Indien zwischen 1990 und 1997 empirisch zu bestimmen. Die Ergebnisse der Regression mit Zufallseffekten zeigen, dass fiskalische Dezentralisierung einen statistisch signifikanten Einfluss auf die Reduzierung der Kindersterblichkeitsrate in Indien hat. Die geschätzten Parameter sind sowohl gegenüber der Art der Messung von Dezentralisierung als auch gegenüber anderen Modellspezifikationen robust. Sie zeigen auch, dass die Effektivität fiskalischer Dezentralisierung beeinflusst werden kann durch andere, ergänzende Faktoren wie z.B. dem Grad der politischen Dezentralisierung. Staaten, die einen starken fiskalischen und politischen Dezentralisierungsgrad aufweisen, sind doppelt so effektiv bei der Reduzierung der Kindersterblichkeitsrate wie diejenigen, die zwar auch eine hohe fiskalische Dezentralisierung erreicht haben, aber politisch noch sehr zentralisiert sind

Modeling the impact of fiscal decentralization on health outcomes : Empirical evidence from India

Over the last two decades, many countries around the world have been enthusiastically embarking on the path of decentralization. Decentralization has been advocated as a powerful means to improve the provision of health care services and health outcomes in developing countries. However, due to a preconceived idea that decentralization will result in efficient allocation of public resources and lack of an analytical framework to systematically analyze its impact on health outcomes, very little empirical works have been done in this area. Scant attention has also been given to analyze factors enabling or constraining its outcomes. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model and use it to test empirically the impact of fiscal decentralization on rural infant mortality rates in India between 1990 and 1997. The random effect regression results show that fiscal decentralization plays a statistically significant role in reducing rural infant mortality rate in India and the results are robust to the way the decentralization variable is measured and to different model specifications. The results also show that the effectiveness of fiscal decentralization can be affected by other complementary factors such as the level of political decentralization. States who have good fiscal and political decentralization index are twice more effective in reducing infant mortality rates than states with high fiscal but low political decentralization index