Costa-Font, Joan 
ORCID: 0000-0001-7174-7919, Gemmill, Marin and Rubert, Gloria
(2011)
Biases in the healthcare luxury good hypothesis?: a meta-regression analysis.
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society, 174 (1).
pp. 95-107.
ISSN 0964-1998
Abstract
Although a growing literature examining the relationship between income and health expenditures suggests that healthcare is a luxury good, this conclusion is debatable owing to heterogeneity of the existing results. The paper tests the luxury good hypothesis (namely that income elasticity exceeds 1) by using meta-regression analysis, taking into consideration publication selection and aggregation bias. The findings suggest that publication bias exists, which is a result that is robust to the meta-regression model employed. Publication selection and aggregation bias also appear to play a role in the generation of estimates. The corrected estimates of income elasticity range from 0.4 to 0.8, which cast serious doubt on the validity of the luxury good hypothesis.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.rss.org.uk/main.asp?page=3003 |
| Additional Information: | © 2010 Royal Statistical Society |
| Divisions: | Social Policy European Institute LSE Health Health Policy |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
| Date Deposited: | 11 Aug 2010 12:37 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Oct 2025 18:36 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/28989 |
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