 The determinants of access to health care and medicines in IndiaDivya Srivastava and Alistair McGuire Applied Economics, 2016, vol. 48, issue 17, 1618-1632 Abstract: This article explores the issue of demand for health care and medicines in India where household share of total health expenditure is one of the highest among high- and low-income countries. Previous work found that important determinants include health status, socio-demographics, income and demand for care was inelastic. Compared with previous studies, this article uses large household data sets including data on medicine expenditure to explore health-seeking behaviour. Count models find that determinants include health status, socio-demographic information, health insurance, household expenditure and government regulation. Elasticities range from −0.13 to 0.03 and are generally consistent with literature findings. For inpatient care, conditional on having at least one hospitalization, the expected number of hospitalizations increases with being male and household expenditure. Medicine expenditure accounts for a large share of household health expenditure. Low-income individuals could experience problems and raises important policy implications on the demand and supply side to improve access to health care and medicines for patients in India. Date: 2016 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:48:y:2016:i:17:p:1618-1632 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1105921 Access Statistics for this article Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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