Informal care and Medicare expenditures: testing for heterogeneous treatment effects.

Full Abstract

We estimate the effect of informal care on Medicare expenditures not only for care provided by children but also by the source of informal care (sons versus daughters, children versus others) and recipient characteristics (marital status). Our conceptual framework predicts heterogeneous effectiveness by source and recipient of informal care. We estimate two-part expenditure models as a function of informal care, controlling for endogeneity. We find that informal care by children reduces Medicare long-term care and inpatient expenditures of single elderly. We find that children are less effective caregivers among recipients who are married. For single elderly, child caregivers are more effective than other types. Gender of a child caregiver does not matter.

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Author information

Author/s: Van Houtven, Courtney Harold (CH); Norton, Edward C (EC);

Affiliation: Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care, Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Durham, NC 27705, USA. courtney.vanhoutven(-atsign-)duke.edu

Grants: K07 AG 01015 (Agency:NIA NIH HHS) ; R03 AG 21485 (Agency:NIA NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Journal of health economics (J Health Econ), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jan; vol 27 (issue 1) : pp 134-56

Dates: Created 2008/01/08; Completed 2008/04/18;

PMID: 17462764, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Aged
Caregivers - economics
Health Expenditures

Humans
Medicare - economics
Models, Econometric
United States

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