Socioeconomics determinants of household’s health expenditures of East Azarbaijan Province: Application of Heckman Regression model.

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating socio-economic factors influencing the health expenditure of households living in East Azerbaijan province in 2017 and using the Heckman regression model. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 3000 households in 2017 in the form of provincial health accounts. A stratified multi-stage sampling method was used to select the sample. The tool for collecting the data of the study was the household income-expenditure questionnaire, which was prepared by the Iranian Statistics Center and completed by the households. The collected data were analyzed using Stata 14 software at a significance level of 90%. Results: The results of descriptive findings showed that the most type of insurance among the studied people was social security insurance (40% of households) and the least was insurance of the relief committee (less than 1% of households). About 12% of households lack basic insurance. Also, based on the inferential findings of socio-economic factors such as having health insurance, not having supplementary insurance, the age of the head of the household, university education, the head of the household being married, the size of the household and the presence of a child seven or under seven years old in the household lead to an increase in household health expenses Discussion: Due to the existence of a positive and significant relationship between the consumption of health services (outpatient and inpatient services) and the direct payment of households for the said services, it is suggested that the indicators related to the financial participation of households in health in all the provinces of the country be regularly and annually. It should be measured and in this way the impact of each program in the field of health in terms of reducing people's share of health costs and increasing justice in fair financial participation in health can be measured. Keywords: health expenditure, direct payment from pocket, household, socio-economic variables, Heckman regression model