Modelling count data with excess zeros: An application to health care utilisation data

Moffatt, Peter and Samsudin, Shamzaeffa (2014) Modelling count data with excess zeros: An application to health care utilisation data. Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, 51 (2). pp. 201-215. ISSN 1511-4554

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Abstract

This study is concerned with the estimation of microeconometric models of health care utilisation. The data set consists of 14,706 individuals from the General Household Survey for Great Britain, and the dependent variable is the number of General Practitioner (GP) consultations over a 2-week period. A clear feature of this count variable is excess zeros, and it is essential to incorporate this feature in the modelling strategy. Accordingly, in addition to standard Poisson and negative binomial models, zero-inflated, two-part, and latent class models are estimated. The zero-inflated negative binomial model (ZINB) proves, on the basis of several selection criteria, to be superior to other models for this dataset. As anticipated, health related variables show significant effects in determining health care utilisation while socioeconomic variables appear to be less important, according to the results from the preferred model. Some effects differ quite markedly between the different models, underlining the importance of the type of process we have used to identify the best-fitting one.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	count data,excess zeros,health care utilization,zero-inflated poisson,negative binomial
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Industrial Economics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Applied Econometrics And Finance Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	15 Apr 2015 14:12
Last Modified:	25 Sep 2024 11:49
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/53133
DOI:	issn:1511-4554

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