American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
The War on Poverty's Experiment in Public Medicine: Community Health Centers and the Mortality of Older Americans
American Economic Review
vol. 105,
no. 3, March 2015
(pp. 1067–1104)
Abstract
This paper uses the rollout of the first Community Health Centers (CHCs) to study the longer-term health effects of increasing access to primary care. Within ten years, CHCs are associated with a reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates of 2 percent among those 50 and older. The implied 7 to 13 percent decrease in one-year mortality risk among beneficiaries amounts to 20 to 40 percent of the 1966 poor/non-poor mortality gap for this age group. Large effects for those 65 and older suggest that increased access to primary care has longer-term benefits, even for populations with near universal health insurance. (JEL H75, I12, I13, I18, I32, I38, J14)Citation
Bailey, Martha J., and Andrew Goodman-Bacon. 2015. "The War on Poverty's Experiment in Public Medicine: Community Health Centers and the Mortality of Older Americans." American Economic Review, 105 (3): 1067–1104. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20120070Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- H75 State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions
- I12 Health Behavior
- I13 Health Insurance, Public and Private
- I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
- I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
- I38 Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
- J14 Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-labor Market Discrimination