The Effect of Basic Health Insurance for the Poor on Adult Mortality Risks: Mexico's Seguro Popular

The single most important outcome when evaluating the performance of health care systems should be their effect on health status. This study assesses the effect of Mexico's public health insurance Seguro Popular on the... [ view full abstract ]

The single most important outcome when evaluating the performance of health care systems should be their effect on health status. This study assesses the effect of Mexico's public health insurance Seguro Popular on the mortality risks of adult beneficiaries. It finds a significant negative effect for males, but only small or no effects for females. Moreover, pre-existing health infrastructure is shown to be a strong mediating factor in the size if these impacts. The paper uses the universe of individual death registered in Mexico during the 2004-13 period, estimating discrete time survival models with two-sided truncation. Identification is achieved using the staggered roll-out of Seguro Popular at the locality level, controlling for locality, year , and age fixed effects.