The impact of health insurance on households? financial choices: Evidence from Vietnam

This paper investigates the impact of health insurance on families' financial service choices in Vietnam using TVSEP data from three waves in 2013, 2016, and 2017. The endogeneity is handled via a recursive multivariate probit model. The findings indicate that while health insurance has no effect on private health insurance, it has a positive effect on savings and investments and a negative effect on credit choice. The multivariate probit model's results are robust to both the instrumental variable two-stage least squares model and the bivari-ate probit model. In addition, correlations between error components in financial service choice equations indicate a possible pattern of household financial usage. The results sug-gest that health insurance improves households' financial well-being. The implication of the findings is that when developing social security policies aimed at achieving universal health insurance, the influence of health insurance on household finances should not be underestimated.(c) 2022 University of Venice. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.