Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/207624 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper Series No. 648
Publisher: 
University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
We investigate the properties of health insurance demand in Burkina Faso, where we offered poor households a voluntary health insurance product at half the usual price. The targeting procedure we implemented delivers a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, which identifies the price elasticity of demand for health insurance as well as associated selection effects. We find large price elasticities among urban households, whereas the demand of rural households is price-inelastic. There are important selection effects, with widowed male household heads being most price-sensitive. Correlating these heterogeneous effects with survey data on informal transfers and health expenditures, our results suggest that informal risk-sharing largely crowds out formal insurance and that a single insurance product may fail to align with poor households' small health budgets. We find no adverse selection into health insurance.
Subjects: 
Health insurance
Micro-health insurance
Social health insurance
Health insurance demand
Targeting
Adverse selection
JEL: 
G22
I13
I38
O15
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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