Poverty, Health Insurance Status, and Health Service Utilization Among the Elderly

Research on health service utilization among the elderly is unambiguous in finding that those who are the most heavily insured use the most health services. What is less clear, however, is whether the favorable effect of health insurance coverage holds for low-income populations. As such, this study uses data from the Rand version of the Health Retirement Study spanning the years 2002 to 2010 to examine the extent of heterogeneous use of health services within the population of elderly poor and the degree to which health insurance status moderates the effect of poverty on health service utilization.