Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, Faculty of Economy, Business and Tourism, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), 35001 Las Palmas, Spain.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 5;19(23):16248. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192316248.
This study focuses on the effect of private health insurance on financial risk taking in Spanish households. According to the arguments related to the background risk, we propose two hypotheses: the first predicts a positive relationship between health insurance and risk taking and the second asserts that attitude to risk moderates this relationship. Spain is a good laboratory because it has a National Health System (NHS) that offers healthcare coverage to the entire population, which could eliminate the effect of health insurance on risk taking. Based on a sample of 6110 households obtained from the Household Finance Survey (EFF), our results confirm both hypotheses. Specifically, we show that private health insurance significantly increases a household's portfolio risk, especially in households with greater risk aversion. The results are concordant with the scarce amount of previous empirical evidence obtained in other contexts and are robust for different subsamples and estimation methods.
本研究聚焦于私人医疗保险对西班牙家庭财务风险承担的影响。根据与背景风险相关的论点，我们提出了两个假设：第一个假设预测医疗保险与风险承担之间存在正相关关系，第二个假设则断言风险态度会调节这种关系。西班牙是一个很好的实验室，因为它拥有一个全民医疗保健系统（NHS），为全体民众提供医疗保障，这可能会消除医疗保险对风险承担的影响。基于从家庭金融调查（EFF）中获得的 6110 户家庭样本，我们的研究结果证实了这两个假设。具体来说，我们表明私人医疗保险显著增加了家庭的投资组合风险，尤其是在风险规避程度较高的家庭中。这些结果与其他背景下获得的先前实证证据相吻合，并且在不同的子样本和估计方法下都是稳健的。
