Sex, Marital Status, and Medical Utilization by Injured Workers

Research on gender and marital differences in medical utilization has been hampered by the quality of the data. The prices of medical care and the qualitative differences in insurance coverage have not been available, and the medical costs and type of care received have not been precisely measured. We use a very large sample drawn from workers' compensation claims to overcome some of these deficiencies, and test for structural differences in gender and marital status in an economic model that takes account of the institutional nature of the workers' compensation system. We find a pervasive lack of significant coefficient differences that suggests the need to carefully control for the type of care received and the importance of precisely measured