The Relationship Between Economic Conditions, Access to Health Care, and Health Outcomes

This paper analyses the impact of access to health care and economic conditions on health outcomes. Fixed-effects models are estimated using municipality data from 1996 to 2001. Health is proxied by total mortality rates divided into three different causes of death. Access to health care is proxied by number of physicians, and other medical personnel. Unemployment, which has been an important determinant of mortality in many studies, is found to have no effect on health outcomes in our data. We also find an insignificant effect of per capital number of GPs on mortality. However, the number of vacant positions (unmet demand) in municipalities increases mortality rates significantly. In a policy simulation, we find that mortality rates can be reduced on average by 0.8 per cent by eliminating all (around 500) vacant GP positions.