Does Increased Access Increase Equality? Gender and Child Health Investments in India

Emily Oster

No 12743, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Policymakers often argue that increasing access to health care is one crucial avenue for decreasing gender inequality in the developing world. Although this is generally true in the cross section, time series evidence does not always point to the same conclusion. This paper analyzes the relationship between access to child health investments and gender inequality in those health investments in India. A simple theory of gender-biased parental investment suggests that gender inequality may actually be non-monotonically related to access to health investments. At low levels of availability, investment in girls and boys is low but equal; as availability increases, boys get investments first, creating inequality. As availability increases further, girls also receive investments and equality is restored. I test this theory using data on the relationship between gender balance in vaccinations and the availability of "Health Camps" in India. I find support for a non-monotonic relationship. This result may shed light on the contrast between the cross-sectional and time-series evidence on gender and development, and may provide guidance for health policy in developing countries.

JEL-codes: I18 J13 J16 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev and nep-hea
Note: LS EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published as Oster, Emily. "Does Increased Access Increase Equality? Gender and Child Health Investments in India." Journal of Development Economics 89, 1 (May 2009): 62-76.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12743.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does increased access increase equality? Gender and child health investments in India (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12743

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12743

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().