Abstract
This chapter brings two interesting issues into focus. And both of them have been treated with considerable interest in the contemporary literature on utilisation of health services (Rahman and Rao 2004; Kumar 2001; Fernandez et al. 1999; Ganatra and Hirve 1994; Koenig et al. 2001, etc.). First, the gender differentials in health-care access including hospitalisation and outpatient care. The second follows from the first and relates to similar differentials between the rich and the poor or, as we have been terming in this analysis, above-poverty (APL) and below-poverty (BPL) populations. In the remainder of this chapter, it is attempted to provide a few empirical details covering both of these issues, and once again our value addition lies in our focus on high-poverty areas of two major states and an exclusive, though small, sample of slum households in Delhi. Alongside, it may also be noted that self-reported data on health, morbidity and utilisation of health care require cautious interpretation because of variations in perceptions about one’s own health, suffering and healing by individual respondents (Rahman and Barsky 2003; Sen 2002).
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- 1.
With tremendous improvement in health status of populations all over the world, there are some who believe that this debate is losing its relevance. We however refrain from taking a position either way.
- 2.
The z values and the methodology used to derive below- and above-poverty populations remained as was in Box 3.1 (i.e. consumption poverty 1).
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Alam, M. (2013). Self-Reported Ailments and Hospitalisation: Differentials in Utilisation of Health Care. In: Paying Out-of-Pocket for Drugs, Diagnostics and Medical Services. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1281-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1281-2_4
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