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Can having internal locus of control insure against negative shocks? Psychological evidence from panel data.

ABSTRACT: We investigate whether the intensity of emotional pain following a negative shock is different across the distribution of a person's locus of control - the extent to which individuals believe that their actions can influence future outcomes. Using panel data from Australia, we show that individuals with strong internal locus of control are psychologically insured against own and others' serious illness or injury, close family member detained in jail, becoming a victim of property crime and death of a close friend, but not against the majority of other life events. The buffering effects vary across gender. Our findings thus add to the existing literature on the benefits of internal locus of control.

SUBMITTER: Buddelmeyer H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5510663 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Can having internal locus of control insure against negative shocks? Psychological evidence from panel data.

Buddelmeyer Hielke H Powdthavee Nattavudh N

Journal of economic behavior & organization 20151224

We investigate whether the intensity of emotional pain following a negative shock is different across the distribution of a person's locus of control - the extent to which individuals believe that their actions can influence future outcomes. Using panel data from Australia, we show that individuals with strong internal locus of control are psychologically insured against own and others' serious illness or injury, close family member detained in jail, becoming a victim of property crime and death ...[more]

PMID: 28713185

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Project description:BackgroundSouth Africa has a dual system of healthcare model differentiated across socio-economic lines. While on the one hand there exists high quality private facilities that is expensive and accessible to the minority, on the other is the free but stretched and over-crowded public healthcare that the rest of the population relies on. Accessing private facilities requires private medical insurance or requires coping strategies that can lead to household vulnerability.ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to analyse the relationship between health shocks and household vulnerability in the South African context of high poverty and low medical insurance penetration rate.DataThe study employs data from waves three to five of South Africa's nationally representative National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) conducted between the period 2012-2017 in approximately two-year intervals.MethodsUsing food expenditure shock as an indicator for vulnerability, the study utilises a range of econometric techniques from panel logit regression to quasi-experimental design based difference in difference regressions to assess the association between health shocks, medical insurance and household vulnerability.FindingsThe main finding of the study is that a significant proportion of households in the upper income quintile utilise private healthcare even when not covered by private medical insurance. This preference for private over public health facilities make them vulnerable to health shocks as they cope by sacrificing food consumption to incur additional health expenditure. In contrast, lower income households that are unable to access the high-cost private healthcare tend to rely on the strained public healthcare system. They are not able to use their constrained food expenditure as a coping strategy for private or out-of-pocket medical expenses because their food consumption is already at a bare minimum.ConclusionThe results confirm that access to quality healthcare is a privilege in South Africa, available only to the minority of the population. The study paints a grim picture of household vulnerability in South Africa and underlines the need for a National Health Insurance that would enable universal access to quality healthcare in the country.

Dataset Information

Can having internal locus of control insure against negative shocks? Psychological evidence from panel data.

Publications

Can having internal locus of control insure against negative shocks? Psychological evidence from panel data.

Similar Datasets

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