Equity in Access to Health Services in Developing Countries

Jean-Claude Berthélemy and Juliette Seban

Revue d’économie du développement, 2009, vol. 17, issue 5, 9-40

Abstract: In the decade 2000-2010, development policy has given health care higher priority, which has translated as a sharp global increase in health expenditure. This increase can only effectively help reduce poverty if the expenditure is efficient and if access to health services becomes more equitable. This paper contributes to the study of health equity in developing countries, focusing specifically on child and mother health care services. Our research highlights that increased public health expenditure is directed more towards the poor than the rich, but that health equity is only marginally improved. We also find that access to health services is significantly dependent on household socioeconomics, including the mother?s level of education. A policy targeting better schooling for girls would therefore significantly improve access to health services among poor populations. Finally, we identify several dimensions of governance that could help significantly close the health equity gap. JEL Classification: I1, I3.

Keywords: health; equity; developing country (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=EDD_235_0009 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-du-developpement-2009-5-page-9.htm (text/html)
free

Related works:
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:cai:edddbu:edd_235_0009

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue d’économie du développement from De Boeck Université Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().