Biases in the Healthcare Luxury Good Hypothesis?: A Meta-Regression Analysis

Summary Although a growing literature examining the relationship between income and health expenditures suggests that healthcare is a luxury good, this conclusion is debatable owing to heterogeneity of the existing results. The paper tests the luxury good hypothesis (namely that income elasticity exceeds 1) by using meta-regression analysis, taking into consideration publication selection and aggregation bias. The findings suggest that publication bias exists, which is a result that is robust to the meta-regression model employed. Publication selection and aggregation bias also appear to play a role in the generation of estimates. The corrected estimates of income elasticity range from 0.4 to 0.8, which cast serious doubt on the validity of the luxury good hypothesis.