This setting lets you change the way you view articles. You can choose to have articles open in a dialog window, a new tab, or directly in the same window.
Open in Dialog
Open in New Tab
Open in same window

American Economic Review: Vol. 92 No. 1 (March 2002)

AER Volume. 92, Issue 1 | leftPrevious ArticleNext Articleright

Expand

Quick Tools:

Print Article Summary Email Link to this Article Export Citation
Sign up for Email Alerts Follow us on Twitter

Explore:

AER - All Issues

AER Forthcoming Articles

Insuring Consumption Against Illness

Article Citation

Gertler, Paul, and Jonathan Gruber. 2002. "Insuring Consumption Against Illness ." The American Economic Review, 92(1): 51-70.

DOI: 10.1257/000282802760015603

Abstract

One of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness. We investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from Indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information. We find that there are significant economic costs associated with major illness, and that there is very imperfect insurance of consumption over illness episodes. These estimates suggest that public disability insurance or subsidies for medical care may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance. (JEL O0, H1)

Article Full-Text Access

Full-text Article

Authors

Gertler, Paul (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, US)
Gruber, Jonathan (Department of Economics, E52-355, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02142, US)


American Economic Review



AEA Member Login:


Quick Tools:

Email Link to this Issue

Sign up for Email Alerts

Follow us on Twitter

Subscription Information
(Institutional Administrator Access)

Explore:

AER - Forthcoming Articles

AEA Journals

Virtual Field Journals

AEAweb | AEA Journals | Contact Us