The causes and consequences of medical crowdfunding

Aniket Panjwani and Heyu Xiong

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 205, issue C, 648-667

Abstract: In 2020, an estimated 8 to 12 million Americans started an online fundraising campaign to cover the cost of healthcare. In this paper, we study the causes and consequences of medical crowdfunding using data from GoFundMe, one of the largest online fundraising platforms. First, we show that the ACA Medicaid expansion had a statistically meaningful effect in reducing the number of health-related GoFundMe campaigns. This suggests that the demand for crowdfunded medical care could be driven, in part, by lack of health insurance coverage. Next, we show that the growth of medical crowdfunding can exacerbate group-level inequality by reinforcing existing disparities in health access. Specifically, we document that GoFundMe campaigns organized by individuals with distinctively African-American or Hispanic surnames and first-names are significantly less likely to meet their fundraising target and raise less funds overall than those organized by individuals with neutral or distinctively White names. We conclude by investigating the channels underlying these racial disparities in crowdfunding success.

Keywords: Charitable giving; Medical crowdfunding; Healthcare; Health insurance; Racial inequality, Digitization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122004218
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:205:y:2023:i:c:p:648-667

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.11.017

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().