The Great Recession and inequalities in access to health care: a study of unemployment and unmet medical need in Europe in the economic crisis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Unmet medical need (UMN) had been declining steadily across Europe until the 2008 Recession, a period characterized by rising unemployment. We examined whether becoming unemployed increased the risk of UMN during the Great Recession and whether the extent of out-of-pocket payments (OOP) for health care and income replacement for the unemployed (IRU) moderated this relationship.

Methods

We used the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) to construct a pseudo-panel (n = 135 529) across 25 countries to estimate the relationship between unemployment and UMN. We estimated linear probability models, using a baseline of employed people with no UMN, to test whether this relationship is mediated by financial hardship and moderated by levels of OOP and IR

SUBMITTER: Madureira-Lima J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5837221 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature