title: Health care quality, economic inequality, and precautionary saving.
abstract: We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behavior. We exploit district-wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality and precautionary saving. We find that in lower quality districts there is greater income and health dispersion and higher precautionary saving. The analysis carries important insights for the ongoing debate about the validity of the life-cycle model and interesting policy implications for the design of health care systems.
authors.affiliation: University of Salerno, Italy.
authors.forename: Tullio
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jappelli
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pistaferri
authors.forename: Guglielmo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Weber
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005382:Financing, Personal; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D011050:Policy Making; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D012923:Social Class; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013222:State Medicine / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration; D026712:Value of Life / Q000191:economics*