Public Health Transfers in Kind: Measuring the Distributional Effects in Italy

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to translate into a monetary amount the benefits received by the provision of health related public services in Italy, analyze their incidence and relevance and study their implications on the distribution of income among individuals. Beyond the traditional insurance-based approach, we propose an alternative method, which assigns health related transfers according also to the individual income and self-assessed health status. We apply the two approaches to Italy in 2003. In addition, we test for equality of health opportunities among citizens.

Keywords: income distribution, health equality of opportunity, public in kind

JEL Classification: D31, I18