Department of Applied Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, Campus Universitario de Cartuja, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Eur J Health Econ. 2011 Feb;12(1):17-28. doi: 10.1007/s10198-010-0220-z. Epub 2010 Feb 5.
In Spain, a growing body of literature has drawn attention to analysing the differences in health and health resource utilisation of immigrants relative to the autochthonous population. The results of these studies generally find substantial variations in health-related patterns between both population groups. In this study, we use the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique to explore to what extent disparities in the probability of using medical care use can be attributed to differences in the determinants of use due to, e.g. a different demographic structure of the immigrant collective, rather than to a different effect of health care use determinants by nationality, holding all other factors equal. Our findings show that unexplained factors associated to immigrant status determine to a great extent disparities in the probability of using hospital, specialist and emergency services of immigrants relative to Spaniards, while individual characteristics, in particular self-reported health and chronic conditions, are much more important in explaining the differences in the probability of using general practitioner services between immigrants and Spaniards.
在西班牙，越来越多的文献引起了人们对分析移民与本地人口之间健康和卫生资源利用差异的关注。这些研究的结果普遍发现，这两个群体在与健康相关的模式方面存在很大差异。在本研究中，我们使用奥克塔卡-布兰德分解技术来探讨由于移民群体的人口结构不同等原因，在医疗保健使用概率上的差异在多大程度上可以归因于使用决定因素的差异，而不是由于国籍对医疗保健使用决定因素的不同影响，在其他所有因素相等的情况下。我们的研究结果表明，与移民身份相关的无法解释的因素在很大程度上决定了移民相对于西班牙人使用医院、专科和急诊服务的概率差异，而个体特征，特别是自我报告的健康状况和慢性病，在解释移民和西班牙人使用全科医生服务的概率差异方面更为重要。
