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The study uses the data report from the “Survey of Family Income and Expenditure in Taiwan” from 1981 to 2000. The health and medical care expenditure accounts for 11.09% of the total household expenditure in 2000, which is about 146.44% of the percentage in 1981 which is about 4.50%.
Based on the database of the “Survey of Family Income and Expenditure in 2000”, the health and medical care expenditure items, could be identified as following three major items, (1) treatment in hospital, hospital service, and health insurance, (2) expenditure of medical article, and (3) medical consumption of National Health Insurance (NHI). This study further conduct a stepwise regression on analyzing the household behavior on health and medical care expenditure in Taiwan. Result shows that the socio-economic condition and consumer behavior varies greatly from county to county. A multivariate factor analysis and a cluster analysis are employed to divide twenty-three counties into six groups according to eight major consumption expenditure items. The result suggests that the counties in the same group have similar city hierarchy or geographic proximity. The stepwise regression are used to identify how the household disposable income, expenditure on NHI, number of persons in the household, number of persons over 65 years old in the household, number of child under 6 years old in the household, age, sex, industry, occupation and education of the household head, and the degree of urbanization of the household affect the total health and medical care expenditure and the three major expenditure items.
The empirical results of this study are as follows: the total health and medical care expenditure and the three major expenditure items will increase if there are more household disposable income, expenditure on NHI, number of persons in the household, number of persons over 65 years old in the household, and number of child under 6 years old in the household. If household heads are female then the household will spend much more money on these expenditures than household heads who are male. Moreover, the household heads who have better education spend less on these expenditures, and if the more the household heads age, the more spending on treatment in hospital, hospital service, health insurance, and expenditure of medical article, but the effect on the other two expenditures is not significant. If the household heads are unemployed, then the household temps to spend more on the health and medical care expenditure, treatment in hospital, hospital service, health insurance, and medical consumption of NHI than the household heads who are employed, but there shows no difference on the expenditure of medical article.
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