Alistair McGuire is Chair of Health Economics at the Department of Health Policy (LSE). Before this role, he was Professor of Economics at City University, London, and an Economics tutor at the University of Oxford. He has also been a visiting professor at prestigious universities such as Harvard, the University of Sydney, the University of York, and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Over the course of more than thirty years, he has built a distinguished career in the field of health economics, providing advice to governments and international institutions such as the World Bank, WHO, and the IMF, and has served as lead health economist in numerous clinical trials.

Abstract:

We study the long-term impact of the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom, which introduced free at the point of access healthcare to the UK population, on selected population health and educational outcomes.  We use a unique individual-level data set based on UK Census data coupled with data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS LS), which spans five decades to consider the intergenerational impact of the UK NHS on these outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity design, we analyse future health and education outcomes of those born around the introduction of the NHS in the UK, (our first-generation) on the 5th of July 1948. We then observe the impact of the NHS on a second generation of the population (individuals born to our first-generation individuals) into early adulthood.  We find that the health outcomes of the treated first generation improve. The impact of the NHS on the second-generation individuals’ outcomes are more mixed. Our results also indicate a negative selection into fertility, which could explain a reduction in the observed outcomes of the second-generation individuals. This is work in progress as we are currently collecting further data on first- and second-generation individuals to further reflect the long-reach associated with the introduction of the NHS.

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Presentation