The Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Utilization in Turkey.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare utilization in Turkey. METHODS: We utilized individual-level data derived from Turkish Statistical Institute's annual surveys between 2014 and 2022 and estimated probit regression models. RESULTS: We find that COVID-19 pandemic reduced healthcare utilization by 11.8% after taking into account a large set of background variables. Although our study finds that the elderly and those with health problems are more likely to use healthcare services under normal circumstances, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused notable drops in the healthcare utilization among the elderly (-6.5%) and those with health problems (-3.8%). Although those without health insurance had lower utilization of healthcare services before the pandemic, during the pandemic they were not particularly hit. CONCLUSION: We conclude that the pandemic did not lower the healthcare utilization in Turkey because of the supply constraints. Also, the evidence points to the reduced demand due to the fear of contagion rather than financial concerns.

The toll of COVID-19 on organ donation and kidney transplantation in Europe: Do legislative defaults matter?

This study investigates the cascading effects of COVID-19 pandemic on organ donation and transplantation in Europe. We also check whether legislative defaults for organ donation have a role in these outcomes. For this purpose, we used data from 32 European countries, between 2010 and 2021, and estimated pooled OLS regressions. We find that COVID-19 pandemic reduced deceased organ donation rates by 23.4%, deceased kidney transplantation rates by 27.9% and live kidney transplantation rates by 31.1% after accounting for health system capacity indicators. While our study finds that presumed consent legislation under normal circumstances leads to notable benefits in terms of deceased kidney transplantation and organ donation rates, the legislative defaults did not have a significant impact during the pandemic. Additionally, our findings indicate a trade-off between living and deceased transplantation that is influenced by the legislative default.

How does Inequality Hamper Subjective Well-being? The Role of Fairness.

In this study, we aim at clarifying the role of economic inequality on the subjective well-being of individuals. For this purpose, we use more than 180,000 individuals from 51 countries in the most recent five waves (1990-2014) of the World Values Survey. We observe a significant tradeoff between life satisfaction, happiness and the Gini coefficient. Also, inequality is negatively associated with life satisfaction and happiness for lower-income groups as well as higher-income groups. Interestingly, our data also shows large scale embracement of inequality in self-reported attitudes as even almost half (49%) of the lower-income group support the statement that some inequality is necessary for sustaining individual effort. Perceived freedom, and perceived social mobility partially mediates the relationship between the Gini coefficient and subjective wellbeing indicators. Yet, there remains a substantial negative effect of inequality on subjective well-being. Nevertheless, when individuals' perception of fairness is included, the effect of inequality disappears for both higher-income and lower-income groups. Overall, our findings suggest that people are bothered by inequality primarily due to fairness concerns. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02711-w.