1. ¹The Geneva Association
2. ²Queen Mary, University of London, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and IZA, Bonn

^*We would like to thank A. Chevalier, A. Spencer, two anonymous referees and the participants of the third "Journées Louis-André Gérard-Varet d'Économie Publique" (2004) for very accurate and detailed comments. We take full responsibility for remaining errors. The data and tables used in this paper were made available through the U.K. Data Archive. The data were originally collected by the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-social Change at the University of Essex, now incorporated within the Institute for Social and Economic Research. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the archive bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

Abstract

This paper investigates empirically how different insurance plans affect individual behaviours in terms of prevention activities in the U.K. The data come from the British Household Panel Survey. We test if purchasing private health insurance modifies the probability of exercising, undergoing regular check-ups and smoking. Based on both simple probits and an IV strategy, our results suggest that, in the U.K., contracting private health insurance does not lead to less prevention.