Does subsidy work? Price elasticity of demand for influenza vaccination among the elderly in Japan.
OBJECTIVE
Subsidy for influenza vaccination is often provided to the elderly in order to encourage them to receive a flu shot in developed countries. However, its effect on uptake rate, i.e., price elasticity of demand, has not been well studied.


METHODS
Japan's decentralised vaccination programme allows observation of various pairs in price and uptake rate of flu shots among the elderly by the municipality from 2001/2002 to 2004/2005 season. We combine our sample survey data (n=281), which monitor price, subsidy and uptake rate, with published data on local characteristics in order to estimate price elasticity of demand with panel model.


RESULTS
We find price elasticity of demand for influenza vaccine: nearly zero in nationwide, nearly zero in urban area, and -1.07 in rural area.


CONCLUSIONS
The results question the rationale for subsidy, especially in urban area. There are cases where maintaining or increasing the level of subsidy is not an efficient allocation of finite health care resources. When organising a vaccination programme, health manager should be careful about the balance between subsidy and other efforts in order to encourage the elderly to receive shots with price elasticity in mind.
Kondo
Masahide
M
Department of Health Care Policy and Management, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. mkondo@md.tsukuba.ac.jp
Hoshi
Shu-ling
SL
Okubo
Ichiro
I
D000368:Aged; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000191:economics*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D017589:Immunization Programs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007252:Influenza Vaccines / Q000191:economics*; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000517:prevention & control*; D007564:Japan
D007252:Influenza Vaccines