Do Health Shocks Affect Preventive Behavior
Year: 2007
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: and Curtis R. Taylor for helpful comments and suggestions. All errors are my own. This paper examines the impact of health shocks on perceptions about disease risk and demand for preventive health care. I use data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey to identify individual perceptions about the risk of contracting pneumonia and examine whether individuals update these perceptions in response to new information that arrives in the form of a health shock. I find strong evidence of learning- individuals who experience health shocks are less likely to believe that they are not at risk of infection. This change in beliefs is accompanied by a corresponding change in health behavior-individuals who experience a health shock are much more likely to vaccinate than those who do not. Consistent with previous literature, I find that vaccine demand also increases with the prevalence of the disease. However, this effect is substantially smaller than that of a personal health shock suggesting that individuals react more strongly to a personal risk than to the average risk of a disease. 1
Author: Padmaja Ayyagari
Institution: University of South Florida
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1590346344