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Authors: Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Neale Mahoney, and James Okun

Abstract: We document significant disparities in the quality of publicly-financed nursing home care provided to Black patients and White patients in the United States, with most of it arising from differences in the quality of care received within the same nursing home. To do so, we use detailed data on the physical and mental health of about 0.5 million Black and 4 million White nursing home patients covered by Medicare between 2011 and 2016 to estimate race-specific quality measures for almost 10,000 nursing homes. We estimate that, on average, Black patients in our sample receive a quality of nursing home care that is about one-third worse than that received by White patients. Most of this disparity reflects differences in the quality of care received by observably similar Black and White patients in the same nursing home, rather than differences in which nursing homes they go to. Within-nursing home disparities are smaller in nursing homes that treat a larger share of Black patients and in for-profit nursing homes.

Bio: Neale Mahoney is the Trione Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an Affiliated Professor at J-PAL. In 2022-2023, he was a Special Policy Advisor for Economic Policy in the White House National Economic Council. 

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