They are less educated, take worse care of themselves and have lower levels of compliance with doctors' orders.
While neoclassical economic theory sheds insight into the way that audit rates and penalty rates interact when individuals decide to declare income for taxation, it predicts far lower levels of compliance than observed levels of compliance.
For these, 80 100% persistence with treatment for hypertension was associated with significantly lower non-drug medical costs than for levels below 80% (6570$ vs. 7658 10,286$; p < 0.05 for high vs. lower levels of compliance) (Table 6).
The hypothesis of different utilization rates is also consistent with the psychological aspects of GH, which is perceived as a potential source of shame on patients [ 18] and is a plausible reason for lower levels of compliance to treatment.
On the other hand, the use of locked boxes in the departments to collect questionnaires (i.e., the mode of data collection adopted for the university hospital of Careggi and the LHU of Empoli) resulted in lower levels of compliance (36.1%).
This result indicated a higher level of concern about treatment, and a lower level of satisfaction with patient-clinician relationship, treatment convenience, positive beliefs and self-declared compliance for those patients than for patients considered as moderately or highly compliant.
These differences are also reflected in studies showing how females tend to have higher medical compliance, a higher degree of preventive health behavior and beliefs that indicate a lower level of health risk-taking [ 18].
