 Political competition and public healthcare expenditure: Evidence from Indian statesSandip Datta () Social Science & Medicine, 2020, vol. 244, issue C Abstract: In-spite of being the largest democracy in the world, Indian states are spending only around 1% of net state domestic product on public healthcare which is way lower than the world average. This low level of public healthcare spending resulted in a high out of pocket healthcare spending and poor health outcome in India. But democratically elected governments are responsible for spending significant amount of their budget on healthcare for the benefit of the masses. It is generally believed that, in a democracy, political competition drives the elected government to spend more on healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. for the welfare of the citizens. This is especially true in developing countries, like India, where a significant section of population is poor. We empirically argue that intense political competition forces the incumbent government to spend more on public healthcare in order to win the election. Empirical analysis is done by creating a state level panel of 16 major Indian states, covering a span of two decades (1991–2011). Date: 2020 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:244:y:2020:i:c:s027795361930423x Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112429 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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