Remarkable research on health insurance demand in Nigeria. The inverted-U finding (Participants 3 & 4 rejecting ultra-low prices as signaling poor quality) mirrors behavioral econ research on price-quality inferences, but seeing it applied to Nigerian insurance markets is genuinely novel. The distrust-of-institutions angle also tracks with what I've observed in other developing healthcare systems, where governance failures contaminate even legitimately beneficial programs. The religiosity correlation (P50 10x higher for religious vs non-religious) is puzzeling though, could be confounded by income but might also reflect different attitudes toward preventative health plannig versus fatalism.
Great original research. I can't comment on the methodology, but I appreciate reading about it.
Curious about the P50 for women - do you think women being key financial decision-makers is the most salient factor, or is there perhaps a health-oriented mindset too (women are something like 2x more likely to have autoimmune problems compared to men, a chromosomal effect from the double XX).
I definitely agree that women are more health conscious than men (true across cultures) and they are more likely to drive the health decisionmaking in their households (also true across cultures). I have updated the text to clarify that women take the lead in health decisionmaking.
That said, I'm a bit cautious about attributing causality to genetic factors or personality traits - given that this was a small-scale survey-based study. At this stage, I'm satisfied with simply stating that we found that women in our study had a higher P50 than men and that mirrors the behavioral evidence from other studies.
Who knows, if PROMISE Labs Africa wins some huge grant in the near future, we might have the capacity to drill down to the genetic level to figure out what's really happening under the microscope.
Remarkable research on health insurance demand in Nigeria. The inverted-U finding (Participants 3 & 4 rejecting ultra-low prices as signaling poor quality) mirrors behavioral econ research on price-quality inferences, but seeing it applied to Nigerian insurance markets is genuinely novel. The distrust-of-institutions angle also tracks with what I've observed in other developing healthcare systems, where governance failures contaminate even legitimately beneficial programs. The religiosity correlation (P50 10x higher for religious vs non-religious) is puzzeling though, could be confounded by income but might also reflect different attitudes toward preventative health plannig versus fatalism.
Great original research. I can't comment on the methodology, but I appreciate reading about it.
Curious about the P50 for women - do you think women being key financial decision-makers is the most salient factor, or is there perhaps a health-oriented mindset too (women are something like 2x more likely to have autoimmune problems compared to men, a chromosomal effect from the double XX).
I appreciate your thoughts.
I definitely agree that women are more health conscious than men (true across cultures) and they are more likely to drive the health decisionmaking in their households (also true across cultures). I have updated the text to clarify that women take the lead in health decisionmaking.
That said, I'm a bit cautious about attributing causality to genetic factors or personality traits - given that this was a small-scale survey-based study. At this stage, I'm satisfied with simply stating that we found that women in our study had a higher P50 than men and that mirrors the behavioral evidence from other studies.
Who knows, if PROMISE Labs Africa wins some huge grant in the near future, we might have the capacity to drill down to the genetic level to figure out what's really happening under the microscope.