Socioeconomic Attributes and Barriers to Healthcare Access: A Perspective of Dependency

Abstract

It is well documented that people in a low socioeconomic hierarchy have lesser healthcare access than those higher on the hierarchy. However, cases of non-access to healthcare are also observed among those who are at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. The main reason is their dependency on others and therefore, healthcare access also needs to be studied from the perspective of dependency on others. The study discusses healthcare access from the perspective of dependency in the context of socioeconomic attributes and barriers. The discussion is mainly based on the existing literature. The attributes such as ‘age’, ‘gender’ and ‘disability’ and the related four kinds of individuals such as children, disabled men, old age men, and women with threshold levels of best socioeconomic attributes at which the dependency still prevents them from healthcare access. Therefore, two corrective measures are necessary here. First, the family and social support and second, the government intervention. Hence, the sociological and behavioural approaches are necessary to incorporate into health policy along with institutional supports like quality health infrastructure and financial protection provisions for equitable healthcare for all.