Title: |
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Income Measurement in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey |
Description: |
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Accurate measures of individual and family income within health surveys are important for many types of health policy analyses. For example, analyses of trends in insurance coverage are more policy relevant when the groups who lack insurance can be characterized by income or poverty status. Effective policy responses often depend on income and poverty status. In particular, accurate income data are critical when using survey date to estimate who is eligible for public programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP and determining the associated take-up rates. Income also plays the crucial role of denominator when estimating the financial burden on families of out of pocket expenditures for health care. Health policy analyses can suffer from significant biases if they depend on poorly measured and underreported income data. |
Author(s): |
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Jessica S. Banthin and Thomas M. Selden |
Agency: |
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Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality |