The impact of parental drinking on children's use of health care

Balsa, Ana Inés; French, Michael T.

dc.rights.license	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional	*
dc.contributor.author	Balsa, Ana Inés
dc.contributor.author	French, Michael T.
dc.date.accessioned	2022-03-16T18:38:06Z
dc.date.available	2022-03-16T18:38:06Z
dc.date.issued	2011	es
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12806/1305
dc.description.abstract	Objective: Alcohol misuse by parents can affect the demand for children’s health care in a number of different ways. The primary objective of this study is to estimate the impact that high intensity drinkers have on their children’s use of pediatric visits and ER care. Method: We use a nationally representative sample of parents and children from the 2002-2008 National Health Interview Surveys and employ propensity-score methods (PSM). PSM can address some of the limitations associated with multivariate regression models both by using a non parametric approach that does not rely on functional form assumptions and by statistically selecting a subset of untreated individuals for whom the distribution of covariates is similar to the distribution in the treated group. Our working sample consists of 65,926 pairs of adults and children. Results: We find that alcohol consumption by parents is positively associated with children’s health care utilization in some key areas. We observe a robust effect of parental high-intensity drinking on the likelihood of a child's visit to the pediatrician and also find some evidence of increases in the number of pediatric visits and ER use. Conclusions: Understanding and quantifying the costs of parental alcoholism on children are critical to the design of treatment interventions and other policies that can improve the well-being of children of alcoholics. While children's insurance coverage and advances in medical treatment receive important attention in the United States, more emphasis should be placed in addressing the determinants of children's health that stem from parents' health-related behavior.	es
dc.format.extent	28 p.	es
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	es
dc.language	eng	es
dc.publisher	Universidad de Montevideo, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economía, Departamento de Economía	es
dc.relation.ispartof	Documentos de trabajo del Departamento de Economía; UM_CEE_2011_01	es
dc.rights	Abierto	es
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	*
dc.subject	Alcohol misuse	es
dc.subject	Alcohol-related consequences	es
dc.subject	Adolescent health care	es
dc.subject	Children of alcoholics	es
dc.title	The impact of parental drinking on children's use of health care	es
dc.type	Documento de trabajo	es
dc.contributor.filiacion	Balsa, Ana Inés. Universidad de Montevideo, Uruguay	es
dc.contributor.filiacion	French, Michael T. University of Miami	es
dc.type.version	Publicada	es