Publication: Gender Gap in Parents' Financing Strategy for Hospitalization of Their Children : Evidence from India
No Thumbnail Available
Published
2010
ISSN
10579230
Date
2012-03-30
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The 'missing women' dilemma in India has sparked great interest in investigating gender discrimination in the provision of health care in the country. No studies, however, have directly examined discrimination in health-care financing strategies in the case of severe illness of sons versus daughters. In this paper, we hypothesize that households who face tight budget constraints are more likely to spend their meager resources on hospitalization of boys rather than girls. We use the 60th round of the Indian National Sample Survey (2004) and a multinomial logit model to test this hypothesis and to throw some light on this important but overlooked issue. The results reveal that boys are much more likely to be hospitalized than girls. When it comes to financing, the gap in the usage of household income and savings is relatively small, while the gender gap in the probability of hospitalization and usage of more onerous financing strategies is very high. Ceteris paribus, the probability of boys to be hospitalized by financing from borrowing, sale of assets, help from friends, etc. is much higher than that of girls. Moreover, in line with our theoretical framework, the results indicate that the gender gap intensifies as we move from the richest to poorest households.
Link to Data Set
Digital Object Identifier
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Parental Leave Policies, Intra-household Time Allocations and Children's Human Capital(2008)This paper uses a general equilibrium model of marriage and divorce to assess how public policies on parental leave and leave benefits affect intra-household decision making, family structure, intergenerational mobility, and the distribution of income. The benchmark economy is calibrated to US data to replicate some characteristics relevant to the interaction between the marriage and labor markets. The effects of unpaid leave, paid leave benefits, and mandated leave on human capital investment, distribution of income, and welfare are then analyzed.Publication The Impact of Gender Inequality in Education and Employment on Economic Growth : New Evidence for a Panel of Countries(2009)Using cross-country and panel regressions, we investigate to what extent gender gaps in education and employment (proxied using gender gaps in labor force participation) reduce economic growth. Using the most recent data and investigating an extended time period (1960-2000), we update the results of previous studies on education gaps on growth and extend the analysis to employment gaps using panel data. We find that gender gaps in education and employment considerably reduce economic growth. The combined "costs" of education and employment gaps in the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia amount respectively to 0.9-1.7 and 0.1-1.6 percentage point differences in growth compared to East Asia. Gender gaps in employment appear to have an increasing effect on economic growth differences between regions, with the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia suffering from slower growth in female employment.Publication Parental Education and Children's Schooling Outcomes: Evidence from Recomposed Families in Rwanda(2009)In this article, I investigate how educational outcomes of orphans are affected by the education of the family members in their new family. The study uses household survey data from Rwanda that contain a large proportion of children living in households without their biological parents. The data also allow controlling for the educational attainment of the absent biological parents and the type of relationship that links the children to their adoptive families. The results of the analysis suggest that the education of the adoptive parents has a positive impact on the children's schooling. Interestingly, mothers' education matters more for girls, while fathers' education is more important for boys. The results also indicate that placing orphans with their relatives has a positive impact on their schooling. This finding has obvious policy implications for African countries with a large proportion of orphans due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic or to conflicts.Publication Intentions to Participate in Adolescent Training Programs : Evidence from Uganda(2010)Almost one-third of the population in developing countries is under age 15. Hence improving the effectiveness of policy interventions that target adolescents might be especially important. We analyze the intention to participate in training programs of adolescent girls in Uganda, a country with perhaps the most skewed age distribution anywhere in the world. The training program we focus on is BRAC's Adolescent Development Program, which emphasizes the provision of life skills, entrepreneurship training, and microfinance. We find that girls who are more likely to benefit from the program are more likely to intend to participate. The program attracts girls who are likely to place a high value on financial independence: single mothers and girls who are alienated from their families. The program attracts girls who are more likely to benefit from training: girls who believe they could be successful entrepreneurs but currently lack the quantitative skills to do so. Reassuringly, girls who are in school full-time are less likely to intend to participate. We also find that the program attracts girls from poorer villages but we find no evidence that poorer girls within each village are more likely to want to participate. Finally, girls from villages who have previously been exposed to NGO projects are less likely to intend to participate.Publication The Implications of Changing Educational and Family Circumstances for Children's Grade Progression in Rural Pakistan : 1997-2004(2009)We assess factors affecting primary and middle school dropout in rural Punjab and NorthWest Frontier Province over 6 years (1997-2004). These data are unique in a developing-country setting in longitudinally tracking changes in both school and household environments. While grade retention has improved, girls' dropout rates remain fairly high. Results suggest the importance of both household and school factors. For girls, arrival in the family of an unwanted birth in the last 6 years and enrollment in a government (not private) primary school significantly increase the likelihood of dropout, whereas availability of post-primary schooling, having a mother who attended school, and living in a better-off household reduce the probability of dropout. For boys, school quality, measured by the percent of residential teachers in the primary school, and living in a more developed community significantly reduce the probability of dropping out; loss of household remittances significantly increases the likelihood of dropout.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.