Working Paper #2019-008
Health insurance and self-employment transitions in Vietnam
Health insurance can have important effects on self-employment and self-
employment transitions. However, there is a literature gap on the
relationship between health insurance and self-employment in low and
middle income countries, especially in the context of rapid expansion of
health insurance in these countries. This paper examines this
relationship in Vietnam with a focus on the comparison between the
voluntary scheme for the informal sector (mostly self-employed workers)
and the compulsory insurance for the formal sector (mostly wage
workers). We employ a Probit model with selection on a panel from the
Vietnamese Household Living Standards Surveys 2010-2014 to investigate
the association between health insurance and self-employment entry and
exit. We show that those with compulsory health insurance in Vietnam,
the formal workers, are 10 percentage points less likely to enter
self-employment compared to those having voluntary insurance. Regarding
self-employment exit, people with compulsory insurance are more likely
to exit self-employment compared to those covered by voluntary
insurance. However, the effect size is relatively small.
- Keywords
-
- health insurance
- self-employment
- Vietnam
- self-employment entry
- self-employment exit
- JEL codes
-
- I13
- J22
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Leopold, N., Groot, W., Tomini, S., & Tomini, F. (2019). Health insurance and self-employment transitions in Vietnam (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2019-008). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=8098