Year:
2007
Autor(s):
Marcelo Côrtes Neri; Wagner Lopes Soares
Serie number: 645
Abstract:
Income leveis and health status are related variables because an increase in income enables a greater access to assets that improve a person's health status, and because productivity and income gains are associated with an improvement in worker's health. The recent Brazilian experience offers favorable conditions to overcome the endogeneity problem that occur when estimating the impact of income on health. A special health edition from both the 1998 and 2003 National Household Surveys (PNAD/IBGE) allows one to observe the relationship between changes in these two variables. In addition, the Brazilian govemment has adopted and expanded several income transfer programs targeting the elderly poor population. The strategy used to identify the effect of income on health consisted of comparing the health status of eligible and non-eligible groups that is the health of lower income elderly inhabitants before and afier the creation or the expansion of income transfer programs. We have used estimates of differences in differences based on logistic regressions. ResuIts show a distinctive gain in the health status of the lowerincome elderly population.