ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Economics into Population Health: Assessing Policies and OutcomesView all 20 articles
Determinants of willingness to pay for health insurance in later stages of the Covid-19 pandemic? Findings based on the general adult population in Germany
Provisionally accepted
André Hajek*
Hans-Helmut König- University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
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Objective: The aim was to examine which factors contribute to the willingness to pay (WTP) for health insurance in Germany. Methods: Cross-sectional data are taken from a large, population-based study (GESIS panel, wave 50, n=4,447; November 2022 to January 2023). Willingness to pay for health insurance served as outcome measure. Socioeconomic, health-related, coronavirus-related, and political spectrum-related factors were included as independent variables. Multiple linear regressions with cluster-robust standard errors were used. Results: Monthly average WTP for health insurance was €258 (SD: €210). A higher WTP for health insurance was associated with being male (female vs. male: β=-.56.6, 95% CI: -67.7 to -45.5), being older (β=2.1, 95% CI: 1.6 to 2.6), higher education (e.g., intermediary school leaving certificate vs. general/subject-specific university entrance qualification: β=-67.3, 95% CI: -80.7 to -53.8), higher income group (e.g., 1700-2300 Euro vs. under 900 Euro: β=79.8, 95% CI: 36.1 to 123.5), not being married and living together with spouse (e.g., single vs. married/partner living together: β=28.9, 95% CI: 12.4 to 45.4) as well as being politically more right-wing oriented (e.g., right-wing vs. left-wing: β=33.4, 95% CI: 4.5 to 62.3). Conclusion: In contrast to health- and coronavirus-related factors, socioeconomic and political spectrum-related factors were significantly associated with WTP for health insurance in Germany. Moreover, based on the average WTP, one can conclude that individuals do not fully agree with the present contributions to statutory health insurance in Germany as a whole during the Covid-19 pandemic. Future research could focus on cross-country comparisons (with varying healthcare systems and also between individualistic and collectivistic cultures).
Keywords: health insurance, Willingness to pay, Health satisfaction, Left-wing, Right-wing, Income, Education, Coronavirus
Received: 14 Aug 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hajek and König. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: André Hajek
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