The impact of an unemployment insurance reform on incidence rates of hospitalisation due to alcohol-related disorders: a quasi-experimental study of heterogeneous effects across ethnic background, educational level, employment status, and sex in Sweden

Background Many Western countries have scaled back social and health expenditure, including decreases in the generosity and coverage of unemployment insurance, resulting in negative effects on general health and well-being at the aggregate level. Yet, research has not sufficiently looked into hetero...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC public health 2022-10, Vol.22 (1), p.1-1847, Article 1847
Main Authors: Almquist, Ylva B, Miething, Alexander
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol
Alcohol-related disorders
Alcohols
Analysis
Care and treatment
Diagnosis
Disadvantaged groups
Disorders
Education
Employment
Health
Health aspects
Heterogeneity
Hospitalization
Insurance
Insurance coverage
Labor market
Lag time
Medical care, Cost of
Policy change
Quasi-experimental
Quasi-experimental methods
Reform
Registers
Regression analysis
Sex
Sexual behavior
Stress
Subgroups
Sweden
Unemployment
Unemployment insurance
Union membership
Well being
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background Many Western countries have scaled back social and health expenditure, including decreases in the generosity and coverage of unemployment insurance, resulting in negative effects on general health and well-being at the aggregate level. Yet, research has not sufficiently looked into heterogeneity of such effects across different subgroups of the population. In Sweden, the 2006 unemployment insurance reform, implemented on the 1.sup.st of January 2007, encompassed a drastic increase of insurance fund membership fees, reduced benefit levels, and stricter eligibility requirements. As this particularly affected already socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in society, such as foreign-born and low-educated individuals, the current study hypothesise that the reform would also have a greater impact on health outcomes in these groups. Methods Based on register data for the total population, we utilise a quasi-experimental approach to investigate heterogeneous health effects of the reform across ethnic background, educational level, employment status, and sex. Due to behaviourally caused diseases having a relatively shorter lag time from exposure, hospitalisation due to alcohol-related disorders serves as the health outcome. A series of regression discontinuity models are used to analyse monthly incidence rates of hospitalisation due to alcohol-related disorders among individuals aged 30-60 during the study period (2001-2012), with the threshold set to the 1.sup.st of January 2007. Results The results suggest that, in general, there was no adverse effect of the reform on incidence rates of hospitalisation due to alcohol-related disorders. A significant increase is nonetheless detected among the unemployed, largely driven by Swedish-born individuals with Swedish-born or foreign-born parents, low-educated individuals, and men. Conclusions We conclude that the Swedish 2006 unemployment insurance reform generally resulted in increasing incidence rates of hospitalisation due to alcohol-related disorders among unemployed population subgroups known to have higher levels of alcohol consumption. Keywords: Unemployment insurance, Reform, Policy change, Health, Quasi-experimental, Registers, Sweden
ISSN:1471-2458
1471-2458
DOI:10.1186/s12889-022-14209-2