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Social Costs of Gambling in the Czech Republic 2012

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Abstract

Evidence about social costs of gambling is scarce and the methodology for their calculation has been a subject to strong criticism. We aimed to estimate social costs of gambling in the Czech Republic 2012. This retrospective, prevalence based cost of illness study builds on the revised methodology of Australian Productivity Commission. Social costs of gambling were estimated by combining epidemiological and economic data. Prevalence data on negative consequences of gambling were taken from existing national epidemiological studies. Economic data were taken from various national and international sources. Consequences of problem and pathological gambling only were taken into account. In 2012, the social costs of gambling in the Czech Republic were estimated to range between 541,619 and 619,608 thousands EUR. While personal and family costs accounted for 63% of all social costs, direct medical costs were estimated to range from 0.25 to 0.28% of all social costs only. This is the first study which estimates social costs of gambling in any of the Central and East European countries. It builds upon the solid evidence about prevalence of gambling related problems in the Czech Republic and satisfactorily reliable economic data. However, there is a number of limitations stemming from assumptions that were made, which suggest that the methodology for the calculation of the social costs of gambling needs further development.

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Acknowledgements

We thank to Dr Marek Havrda, former advisor to the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic, for fruitful methodological discussions during the course of this study, and to Dr James Shearer from the King’ Health Economics group at King’s College London for critically reviewing previous version of this manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic and also by the project “Sustainability for the National Institute of Mental Health”, LO1611, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under the NPU I program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health, Topolová 748, 250 67, Klecany, Czech Republic

    Petr Winkler, Markéta Bejdová, Ladislav Csémy & Aneta Weissová

  2. King’s Health Economics, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, 16 De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK

    Petr Winkler

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  1. Petr Winkler
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Correspondence to Petr Winkler.

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Conflict of interest

This study was partly founded by the Czech Ministry of Finance and conducted in order to enable informed decision making with regard to the prospective gambling-related legislative changes in the Czech Republic. Ministry of Finance had no role whatsoever as far as the design of the study, data analyses and data interpretation are concerned. Otherwise, authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Winkler, P., Bejdová, M., Csémy, L. et al. Social Costs of Gambling in the Czech Republic 2012. J Gambl Stud 33, 1293–1310 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-016-9660-4

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