title: Socioeconomic Status And Quality Of Care In Rural India: New Evidence From Provider And Household Surveys.
abstract: To assess socioeconomic differences in access to high-quality health care services, we collected novel data on illnesses that required primary care from 23,275 households in 100 villages in Madhya Pradesh, India. We matched the primary care visits for those illnesses to characteristics of the health care providers that members of the households visited. People in the average village in our sample could access eleven providers, of whom 71 percent were in the private sector and 49 percent had no formal medical training. The private sector accounted for 89 percent of the primary care visits in our sample, with 77 percent of the visits made to providers with no formal training. Both access to and use of more knowledgeable providers increased with socioeconomic status, mostly as a result of differences across districts and villages. Strikingly, people in high- and low-socioeconomic-status households in the same village visited equally knowledgeable providers. It was the poor people who lived in poor communities who received especially low-quality care.
authors.affiliation: Jishnu Das (jdas1@worldbank.org) is a lead economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank, in Washington, D.C., and a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, in New Delhi, India.
authors.forename: Jishnu
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Das
authors.affiliation: Aakash Mohpal is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Young Professional in the Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice of the World Bank.
authors.forename: Aakash
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mohpal
mesh_terms: D005191:Family Characteristics; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000592:standards*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D019035:Rural Health Services / Q000592:standards; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
keywords: Access To Care; Health Economics; Primary Care; Quality Of Care; Rural Health Care