Which Households Are Most Distant from Health Centers in Rural China? Evidence from a GIS Network Analysis

John Gibson, Xiangzheng Deng, Geua Boe-Gibson, Scott Rozelle and Jikun Huang

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: In this paper we have two objectives - one empirical; one methodological. Although China’s leaders are beginning to pay attention to health care in rural China, there are still concerns about access to health services. To examine this issue, we use measures of travel distances to health services to examine the nature of coverage in Shaanxi Province, our case study. The mean distance by road to the nearest health center is still more than 6 kilometers. When we use thresholds for access of 5 and 10 kilometers we find that more than 40 (15) percent of the rural population lives outside of these 5 (10) kilometer service areas for health centers. The nature of the access differs by geographical region and demographic composition of the household. The methodological contribution of our paper originates from a key feature of our analysis in which we use Geographic Information System (GIS) network analysis methods to measure traveling distance along the road network. We compare these measures to straight-line distance measures. Road distances (produced by network analysis) produce measures (using means) that are nearly twice as great as straight-line distances. Moreover, the errors in the measures (that is, the difference between road distances and straight-line distances) are not random. Therefore, traditional econometric methods of ameliorating the effects of measurement errors, such as instrument variables regression, will not produce consistent results when used with straight-line distances.

Keywords: health access; measurement error; network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2008-12-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-geo, nep-hea and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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