Socio-economic correlates of outpatient care in a factor analytic framework.

Abstract

Socio-economic factors including income, asset ownership, occupation and ethnicity are generally hypothesized to play an important role in determining ''out-of-pocket'' household health care expenditures. In developing countries and even in situations where governments provide free health care largely through public hospitals, the relationship between the aforesaid factors and the health care expenditure seems to be one of causal nature. The complexity arising, however, from inclusion of all the interrelated factors, in terms of their large numbers and consequent overlapping influences, does not allow a precise estimation of their impact in a simple determinant framework. This problem within a single equation framework is resolved through attempting a factoral analysis. The study is based on survey responses of 320 outpatients selected from two district public hospitals of Rajasthan State in India. The results of this exercise highlight the significant contribution of the aforesaid various factors in infl...