Title
Do Hispanic immigrants spend less on medical care? Implications of the Hispanic health paradox
Abstract
The literature of the Hispanic heath paradox has found that in the U.S. Hispanic immigrants have better health than U.S. natives, even though they tend to have lower socioeconomic status. The main objective of the current study is to investigate whether Hispanic immigrants also use less medical care goods and services. Main contributions of the article include using a data set of older Americans from the Health and Retirement Study covering the period from 1992 to 2012 as well as using three new measures of health, rather than the more common use of morbidity or mortality. We estimate the impact of relevant factors including health, race, and immigrant status upon five different measures of healthcare usage. Even though Hispanic immigrants do have lower mean levels of most measures of healthcare usage, when controlling for other factors in our regressions we find some evidence of increased healthcare usage for Hispanic immigrants. Increased health care utilization may be one explanation for the Hispanic health paradox.
Department(s)
Economics
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2020.1726863
Keywords
Demand for medical care, healthcare utilization, Hispanic health paradox, latent health stock
Publication Date
8-1-2020
Recommended Citation
Basu Roy, Subhasree, Reed Neil Olsen, and Huikuan Tseng. "Do Hispanic immigrants spend less on medical care? Implications of the Hispanic health paradox." Applied Economics 52, no. 36 (2020): 3951-3964.
Journal Title
Applied Economics
