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Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme is a financial support provided by the government to the elderly for having more choices in selecting private primary health care services. It has been launched for more than ten years (including pilot scheme). The success of the voucher depends on its effectiveness so that Hong Kong elderly can benefit from it. The aim of this article is to analyse whether the voucher scheme has achieved its goals and what improvement can be made. The scheme is successful in encouraging the elderly to use private primary care, considering that the participation rate of the scheme is high, and elderly could use private health care services to supplement public health care services. Yet, the amount of the subsidy is insufficient to support the needs of the elderly and the providers of the voucher are not enough for Hong Kong elderly. Also, it is found that private health care services give the old generation an impression of expensiveness and unreliable even with the support of the Health Care Voucher. To improve the Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme and solve the problems, the government should increase the amount of the voucher, set standards for regular monitoring, cooperate with private health care providers and invite more providers. Ultimately, the elderly would enjoy greater flexibility in choosing medical services in meeting their needs and the scheme can effectively achieve its purpose.

AbstractLow participation rates in government assistance programs are a major policy concern in the United States. This paper studies take‐up of Section 8 housing vouchers, a program in which take‐up rates are quite low among interested and eligible households. We link 18,109 households in Chicago that were offered vouchers through a lottery to administrative data and study how baseline employment, earnings, public assistance, arrests, residential location, and children's academic performance predict take‐up. Our analysis finds mixed evidence of whether the most disadvantaged or distressed households face the largest barriers to program participation. We also study the causal impact of peer behavior on take‐up by exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing of voucher offers. We find that the probability of lease‐up increases with the number of neighbors who recently received voucher offers. Finally, we explore the policy implications of increasing housing voucher take‐up by applying reweighting methods to existing causal impact estimates of voucher receipt. This analysis suggests that greater utilization of vouchers may lead to larger reductions in labor market activity. Differences in take‐up rates across settings may be important to consider when assessing the external validity of studies identifying the effects of public assistance programs.

Low participation rates in government assistance programs are a major policy concern in the United States. This paper studies take-up of Section 8 housing vouchers, a program in which take-up rates are quite low among interested and eligible households. We link 18,109 households in Chicago that were offered vouchers through a lottery to administrative data and study how baseline employment, earnings, public assistance, arrests, residential location, and children's academic performance predict take-up. Our analysis finds mixed evidence of whether the most disadvantaged or distressed households face the largest barriers to program participation. We also study the causal impact of peer behavior on take-up by exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing of voucher offers. We find that the probability of lease-up increases with the number of neighbors who recently received voucher offers. Finally, we explore the policy implications of increasing housing voucher take-up by applying reweighting methods to existing causal impact estimates of voucher receipt. This analysis suggests that greater utilization of vouchers may lead to larger reductions in labor market activity. Differences in take-up rates across settings may be important to consider when assessing the external validity of studies identifying the effects of public assistance programs. © 2018 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

"Students enrolled in private schools in 2006 through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the oldest modern private school voucher program in the nation, generally enrolled in college at higher rates and persisted in college longer than similar students at public schools. We also find, however, that as of 2017, rates of college degree attainment were not significantly different. This study adds to the substantial body of evidence on the effects of the Milwaukee voucher program on student outcomes. " ; The Urban Institute

In this article, 25 years of data are utilized from nonprofit schools operating in the United States' oldest and largest private school voucher program to test theories of isomorphism. We find that startup and religious schools belonging to an umbrella organization such as an archdiocese are particularly likely to serve similar student bodies at similar costs. In addition, we find that isomorphic pressures increase the longer a school participates in the Milwaukee voucher program, and that increased program regulation is related to increased sector isomorphism. The results illustrate the difficulty of using New Public Management style reforms, at scale, to encourage a diversity of nongovernment providers to provide a service traditionally provided by the public sector. The results will be of interest to scholars studying nonprofit institutional theories, school choice, and New Public Management style reforms.

This dissertation is about the use of in-cash housing subsidy, in the form of housing voucher, to deliver housing welfare in Hong Kong. This type of subsidy is currently the major type of housing assistance implemented in the United States since 1970s for improving the deteriorating public housing stock as well as the concentrated poverty and racial segregated neighbourhoods developed in the public housing projects. As a foreign policy, the research has taken the academic approach of policy transfer to assess the possibility of importing this American programme for domestic use. Housing subsidies exist in two forms, namely supply side (producer-based, in-kind) subsidy or demand side (consumer-based, in-cash) subsidy. The former refers to the direct construction of social housing by the government or private sector project facilitated by the government via financial incentives, such as construction grants or tax concessions. Hong Kong public housing is using this kind of provision. As for demand side subsidy, the beneficiaries receive financial support from the government in order to enhance the recipients' affordability in housing. As far as renting is concerned, such kind of consumer subsidy can be rental allowance payable in cash or housing voucher redeemable by the landlord. The American Housing Choice Voucher Program is a prominent example. In 2001, the Hong Kong Housing Authority has also implemented a trial policy on disseminating rental allowances to eligible elderly public housing tenants but was called off later. If the program worked satisfactorily, the government would consider extending this policy to ordinary applicants of public housing as well. In-kind housing welfare is provided through administrative assignment, the prospective tenants cannot choose which area to reside and their choices on housing units are very restrictive. Since housing location will influence a person's access to job, education and other chances of life, consumer based housing subsidy allows beneficiary to exercise greater freedom of choice in housing. Policy transfer is about borrowing foreign policy tools or measures for domestic use to solve problems of similar nature. It is a process by which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system. In evaluating the implementation of housing voucher in Hong Kong, this dissertation using policy transfer theorists' multi-level approach in evaluating the macro and micro settings of the policy framework. The macro level will look upon the political, social and economic contexts between U.S. and Hong Kong that embed public housing policy, while the micro level is an examination of the responses of selected actors in policy transfer that facilitate or hinder the transfer. Upon the research findings, both the macro and micro level analyses lead to the conclusion that the transferability of housing voucher system in Hong Kong is relatively low. ; published_or_final_version ; Housing Management ; Master ; Master of Housing Management

Background: Health service fees constitute substantial barriers for women seeking childbirth and postnatal care. In an effort to reduce health inequities, the government of Kenya in 2006 introduced the output-based approach (OBA), or voucher programme, to increase poor women's access to quality Safe Motherhood services including postnatal care. To help improve service quality, OBA programmes purchase services on behalf of the poor and marginalised, with provider reimbursements for verified services. Kenya's programme accredited health facilities in three districts as well as in two informal Nairobi settlements. Methods: Postnatal care quality in voucher health facilities (n = 21) accredited in 2006 and in similar non-voucher health facilities (n = 20) are compared with cross sectional data collected in 2010. Summary scores for quality were calculated as additive sums of specific aspects of each attribute (structure, process, outcome). Measures of effect were assessed in a linear regression model accounting for clustering at facility level. Data were analysed using Stata 11.0. Results: The overall quality of postnatal care is poor in voucher and non-voucher facilities, but many facilities demonstrated 'readiness' for postnatal care (structural attributes: infrastructure, equipment, supplies, staffing, training) indicated by high scores (83/111), with public voucher facilities scoring higher than public non-voucher facilities. The two groups of facilities evinced no significant differences in postnatal care mean process scores: 14.2/ 55 in voucher facilities versus 16.4/55 in non-voucher facilities; coefficient: -1.70 (-4.9, 1.5), p = 0.294. Significantly more newborns were seen within 48 hours (83.5 % versus 72.1 %: p = 0.001) and received Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) (82.5 % versus 76.5 %: p < 0.001) at voucher facilities than at non-voucher facilities. Conclusions: Four years after facility accreditation in Kenya, scores for postnatal care quality are low in all facilities, even those with Safe Motherhood ...

Background: Health service fees constitute substantial barriers for women seeking childbirth and postnatal care. In an effort to reduce health inequities, the government of Kenya in 2006 introduced the output-based approach (OBA), or voucher programme, to increase poor women's access to quality Safe Motherhood services including postnatal care. To help improve service quality, OBA programmes purchase services on behalf of the poor and marginalised, with provider reimbursements for verified services. Kenya's programme accredited health facilities in three districts as well as in two informal Nairobi settlements. Methods: Postnatal care quality in voucher health facilities (n = 21) accredited in 2006 and in similar non-voucher health facilities (n = 20) are compared with cross sectional data collected in 2010. Summary scores for quality were calculated as additive sums of specific aspects of each attribute (structure, process, outcome). Measures of effect were assessed in a linear regression model accounting for clustering at facility level. Data were analysed using Stata 11.0. Results: The overall quality of postnatal care is poor in voucher and non-voucher facilities, but many facilities demonstrated 'readiness' for postnatal care (structural attributes: infrastructure, equipment, supplies, staffing, training) indicated by high scores (83/111), with public voucher facilities scoring higher than public non-voucher facilities. The two groups of facilities evinced no significant differences in postnatal care mean process scores: 14.2/55 in voucher facilities versus 16.4/55 in non-voucher facilities; coefficient: -1.70 (-4.9, 1.5), p = 0.294. Significantly more newborns were seen within 48 hours (83.5 % versus 72.1 %: p = 0.001) and received Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) (82.5 % versus 76.5 %: p < 0.001) at voucher facilities than at non-voucher facilities. Conclusions: Four years after facility accreditation in Kenya, scores for postnatal care quality are low in all facilities, even those with Safe Motherhood vouchers. We recommend the Kenya OBA programme review its Safe Motherhood reimbursement package and draw lessons from supply side results-based financing initiatives, to improve postnatal care quality.

Abstract Background Health service fees constitute substantial barriers for women seeking childbirth and postnatal care. In an effort to reduce health inequities, the government of Kenya in 2006 introduced the output-based approach (OBA), or voucher programme, to increase poor women's access to quality Safe Motherhood services including postnatal care. To help improve service quality, OBA programmes purchase services on behalf of the poor and marginalised, with provider reimbursements for verified services. Kenya's programme accredited health facilities in three districts as well as in two informal Nairobi settlements. Methods Postnatal care quality in voucher health facilities ( n = 21) accredited in 2006 and in similar non-voucher health facilities ( n = 20) are compared with cross sectional data collected in 2010. Summary scores for quality were calculated as additive sums of specific aspects of each attribute (structure, process, outcome). Measures of effect were assessed in a linear regression model accounting for clustering at facility level. Data were analysed using Stata 11.0. Results The overall quality of postnatal care is poor in voucher and non-voucher facilities, but many facilities demonstrated 'readiness' for postnatal care (structural attributes: infrastructure, equipment, supplies, staffing, training) indicated by high scores (83/111), with public voucher facilities scoring higher than public non-voucher facilities. The two groups of facilities evinced no significant differences in postnatal care mean process scores: 14.2/55 in voucher facilities versus 16.4/55 in non-voucher facilities; coefficient: -1.70 (-4.9, 1.5), p = 0.294. Significantly more newborns were seen within 48 hours (83.5 % versus 72.1 %: p = 0.001) and received Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) (82.5 % versus 76.5 %: p < 0.001) at voucher facilities than at non-voucher facilities. Conclusions Four years after facility accreditation in Kenya, scores for postnatal care quality are low in all facilities, even those with Safe Motherhood vouchers. We recommend the Kenya OBA programme review its Safe Motherhood reimbursement package and draw lessons from supply side results-based financing initiatives, to improve postnatal care quality.

Abstract
Chile implemented a targeted voucher programme in 2008 that increased funding for disadvantaged students at public and participating private schools by approximately 50%. This reform would be expected to raise average achievement in participating schools and to reduce the achievement gap related to socioeconomic status, and disadvantaged students did make fourth-grade test-score gains exceeding 0.2 standard deviations that other studies have attributed to the programme. However, we find only small increases in resources and school-switching and little evidence of competition-driven improvement, but a closing of the parental education and income gaps, raising doubts that the programme accounts for much of this convergence.