Three Essays in Health Economics
| dc.contributor.advisor | Grignon, Michel | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Cuff, Katherine | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Zhang, Jonathan | |
| dc.contributor.author | Zhao, Zichun | |
| dc.contributor.department | Economics | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-11-05T17:15:49Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-11-05T17:15:49Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2026 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis comprises three essays in health economics. Chapter 1, co-authored with Dr. Michel Grignon, examines how minimum wage increases affect access to employer-sponsored prescription drug insurance. Using cross-sectional data linked with provincial minimum wages changes from 2008 to 2019, the study identifies threshold effects: increases of 20–30 cents reduce coverage by about three percent, with the strongest impacts among women, young workers, immigrants, and racial minorities. Chapter 2 evaluates the impact of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan Plus (OHIP+), introduced in 2018 to provide free prescription drug coverage to residents under 25. Applying event study and Difference-in-differences methods with administrative emergency department data, the analysis finds no overall effect on utilization but reveals significant declines among low-income households. This suggests that improved drug access reduced reliance on emergency departments as a substitute source of medication. Chapter 3 investigates how a cancer diagnosis influences household spending patterns by linking the Canadian Cancer Registry with household expenditure survey data. The results show an average decline in total spending of about seven percent following a diagnosis, with the largest reductions in food and income tax expenditures. Although budget shares remain broadly stable, heterogeneity analysis reveals meaningful reallocations across families with and without children, single parents, and younger households. In contrast, subsequent diagnoses generate smaller adjustments. | en_US |
| dc.description.degree | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | en_US |
| dc.description.degreetype | Dissertation | en_US |
| dc.description.layabstract | This thesis examines the effects of Canadian public policies on prescription drug access and healthcare utilization, as well as how health shocks influence household spending decisions. The first chapter asks how raising the minimum wage influences workers' access to drug benefits from their employers. It shows that when the minimum wage rises by a certain amount, some workers—especially women, young people, immigrants, and racial minorities—are less likely to have drug coverage through their jobs. The second chapter examines whether Ontario’s OHIP+ program, launched in 2018 to provide free coverage for prescription drugs to everyone under the age of 25, had any effect on visits to the emergency department. While the program did not change overall emergency department visits among young people, it did reduce visits for those from low-income families. This suggests that before OHIP+, some youth may have gone to the emergency department to get medicines they could not otherwise afford. The third chapter looks at how a cancer diagnosis changes family budgetary decisions. It finds that affected households cut their total spending and shift money around—for example, reducing food spending and increasing spending on housing and healthcare. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/32624 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.title | Three Essays in Health Economics | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |