Beneficiary Status Research Articles

The impact of standby letters of credit on bank risk: A note

The paper investigates the capital markets' perception of an off balance sheet instrument issued by banks — a standby letter of credit. Based on an empirical analysis of banking firm stock returns and the volume of standby letters of credit outstanding, it is shown that standby issuance increases the systematic and total risk of bank stock returns. These results support the arguments that the risk of standby letter of credit issuance is similar to the risk of balance sheet lending and that equity investors perceive the senior creditor status of standby beneficiaries.

Selection Bias in TEFRA At-Risk HMOs

The issue of selection bias was investigated using data from 22 HMOs who are enrolling Medicare beneficiaries under Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) at-risk contracts. The study differs from previously published analyses of this issue in that it deals with the current Medicare risk program (TEFRA) rather than with earlier Demonstration Programs; as an indicator of selection bias, it utilizes beneficiary functional health status at enrollment; and it examines selection not only at the mean of the health status distribution, but at the two tails (very disabled, very able) as well. For each of the participating HMOs, the functional health status of recent Medicare enrollees was compared with that of a control group of randomly chosen fee-for-service beneficiaries. None of the HMOs experienced adverse selection, whether measured in terms of overall (mean) health status of enrollees or in terms of the proportion of the very disabled population that chose to join. Nine of the 22 HMOs were considered to have experienced favorable selection on the basis of the mean health status of new enrollees. In addition, ten more HMOs were found to have experienced favorable selection in one or both tails of the health status distribution. Although a specific cause for the observed enrollment patterns is not identified, speculation is made on factors that may or may not contribute. Evidence suggests that beneficiary self-selection is probably a more important explanation of these patterns than purposeful actions of HMOs to discourage enrollment by sicker beneficiaries (i.e., "skimming").

Including health status in Medicare's Adjusted Average Per Capita Cost capitation formula.

Actuarial factors currently comprising Medicare's HMO capitation formula, the Adjusted Average Per Capita Cost (AAPCC), are considered by many researchers to be inadequate as predictors of future period health care costs. While it is often suggested that the formula should incorporate beneficiary health status, no measure of health status suitable for this purpose has yet been identified. The authors present initial results from a study of 1,934 randomly selected Medicare beneficiaries in Michigan. Beneficiaries were surveyed to obtain data on several alternative measures of health status. Medicare claims were used to estimate beneficiary health care costs for periods before and after the survey. In regressions on future period Medicare payments, equations including the AAPCC factors plus a health status measure achieved R2 values ranging from 0.013 to 0.072, depending on the health status measure, compared with an R2 value of 0.003 for the equation with AAPCC factors alone.

Factors influencing the choice of social security early retirement benefits

The present research focuses directly on the choice of early retirement Social Security benefits in 1973 for men who responded to the National Retirement History Survey. This focus is more appropriate than examining early retirement more generally when the issue is solvency of the Social Security system and appropriate changes in benefits and eligibility. While this study confirms the important role of private pensions, it tests an important concept of availability of suitable work. This factor, which proved to be a significant predictor of early beneficiary status for both blacks and whites, is critical to assumptions concerning the effect of possible changes in the age of eligibility for Social Security Early Retirement benefits. The data are also used to estimate a dramatic increase in poverty among early benficiaries and their families if these benefits were removed from their current income.

The Impact of Supplementary Feeding Programmes on the Nutritional Status of Beneficiaries in Addis Ababa

The Impact of Supplementary Feeding Programmes on the Nutritional Status of Beneficiaries in Addis Ababa

Impact of Grameen Bank micro credit on change in livelihood status of women beneficiaries

Grameen Bank (GB) is one of the largest NGO working with the socio-economic upliftment of the poor section, specially women of the society. The main focus on the present study is to determine change in livelihood status of women beneficiaries of GB in twenty selected centers of Jaforgonj north of Debidwar branch under Comilla district; and to identify the existing problems faced by GB participants. Data were collected from 100 randomly selected sample (15% of population), out of population size 663 of GB beneficiaries. Data indicated that change in livelihood status scores of the respondents varied from 4 to 24. The average change in livelihood status score was 13.94. The largest proportion (62 percent) of women belonged to medium, compared to 25 percent and 13 percent belong to low and high change in livelihood status categories respectively. Results of t-test on change of livelihood status in three dimensions namely ‘change of farm and house hold materials', ‘change of housing, health and sanitation' and ‘change of annual family income' in terms of ‘before' and ‘after' involvement were found highly significant. Out of 11 selected characteristics, education, annual income, credit availability, communication with GB employee and staff and attitude towards micro-credit program of GB were positively significant and only age and non-localite behaviour were negatively significant with dependent variable of change in livelihood status. Family size, farm size, organizational participation and attitude towards community did not show any significant relationship with change in livelihood status. Problems faced by beneficiaries in respect of ‘lack of sufficient amount of credit' was the most serious problems, credit disbursement delayed was the second problem and the third problem was ‘belief on dogmatism and fatalism' with problem index 199 among the six existing problems. Keywords: Grameen Bank; Micro credit; Livelihood status; Women beneficiaries DOI: 10.3329/jbau.v7i2.4750 J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 7(2): 381-386, 2009