Efectos del Seguro Social Campesino en el gasto en salud de los beneficiarios: una evaluación de impacto

Abstract

In this article, it is carried out an impact evaluation of the effect of the Seguro Social Campesino (Peasant Public Social Security) public policy (SSC) on the beneficiaries’ health expenditures. To do this, it was used the quasi-experimental quantitative evaluation methodology known as Propensity Score Matching (PSM). The data used was obtained from the Living Conditions Survey (ECV), the sixth round carried out in 2013- 2014 by the Ecuadorian Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC). The results obtained with the different specifications of the Propensity Score (PS) and different algorithms to estimate the effect of the SSC on health expenditure, maintain the existence of a positive and significant effect on health expenditure at 95% and 99% significance. This implies that the households affiliated to the SSC spend on average more than those households that are not part of it in rural areas of Ecuador.