Essays on willingness and ability to pay for health insurance among informal sector workers in Sierra Leone
type: CreativeWork
description: Access to health care is a serious problem in Sierra Leone, more so in rural areas where living standards are low and there is absence of health care facilities. Health insurance, it is argued, will play an important role in giving access to medical care and reducing the high out of pocket (OOP) health expenditure, thus preventing unnecessary deaths and increasing well-being. It is however difficult to know the exact value households place on health and health care as they are not generally exchanged in the market place. For this reason, nonmarket valuation is increasingly becoming an important tool for informing policy makers. The Contingent Valuation and Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) are the most widely used methods. However, due to its increased popularity, the ability to calculate incremental benefit of each attribute used, and it proving to be more appealing, this work therefore used the DCE method to collect data. This study provides the following: first, a review of the application of DCE to health outcomes including health insurance for the period 1990 – 2013; second it estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) for health insurance; third, it estimates the impact of corruption on participation in health insurance; and finally, it looks at ability to pay (ATP) for health insurance among informal sector workers in Sierra Leone using a DCE method. The four essays/papers (Chapters 2 – 5) represent the main outcomes of this research. Eight informal sector activities were selected namely – petty trading, subsistence farming, commercial bike riding (“okada”), cattle rearing, fishing, tailoring, alluvial mining and quarrying. More precisely, the first empirical paper used a random effect logit model to estimate households’ WTP for health insurance for an improvement in coverage, choice of provider and a reduction in waiting time. The second empirical paper on the impact of corruption introduces two definitions of corruption – perceived and actual (free health care).…
abstract: Access to health care is a serious problem in Sierra Leone, more so in rural areas where living standards are low and there is absence of health care facilities. Health insurance, it is argued, will play an important role in giving access to medical care and reducing the high out of pocket (OOP) health expenditure, thus preventing unnecessary deaths and increasing well-being. It is however difficult to know the exact value households place on health and health care as they are not generally exchanged in the market place. For this reason, nonmarket valuation is increasingly becoming an important tool for informing policy makers. The Contingent Valuation and Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) are the most widely used methods. However, due to its increased popularity, the ability to calculate incremental benefit of each attribute used, and it proving to be more appealing, this work therefore used the DCE method to collect data. This study provides the following: first, a review of the application of DCE to health outcomes including health insurance for the period 1990 – 2013; second it estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) for health insurance; third, it estimates the impact of corruption on participation in health insurance; and finally, it looks at ability to pay (ATP) for health insurance among informal sector workers in Sierra Leone using a DCE method. The four essays/papers (Chapters 2 – 5) represent the main outcomes of this research. Eight informal sector activities were selected namely – petty trading, subsistence farming, commercial bike riding (“okada”), cattle rearing, fishing, tailoring, alluvial mining and quarrying. More precisely, the first empirical paper used a random effect logit model to estimate households’ WTP for health insurance for an improvement in coverage, choice of provider and a reduction in waiting time. The second empirical paper on the impact of corruption introduces two definitions of corruption – perceived and actual (free health care).…
author: Kamara, Joseph
keywords: BF Psychology
date published: 2015
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:39:24Z
provider: City University of London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: City University London