Determinants of Household Healthcare Expenditure: A Study in Purulia District, West Bengal

According to World Health Organization health is considered as "state of complete physical, psychological, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Healthy people are considered to be the heart of the nation’s growth. Household healthcare expenditure has been a subject of discourse in the field of Health Economics for quite some time now. This is due to the fact that healthcare expenditure has been on the increase globally and there is the need to determine the factors that influencing household healthcare expenditure. The specific objectives of the present study are to analyze the socio-economic and health expenditure characteristics of households in Kashipur block, to determine the factors that influencing healthcare expenditure of the households in Kashipur block. We have visited randomly selected three villages of Kashipur block in Purulia district, West Bengal and surveyed two hundred households. We have used some simple statistical tools and bar diagram for the pictorial exposition of the data. For statistical analysis of data we have used One-Way ANOVA and Tukey’s method as our post hoc test and multiple regression model. The findings of the study reveal that monthly average health expenditure differs across social category and major source of income of the households. The explanatory variables like monthly average family income, social category, household head’s education, number of members in a household above 60years, having at least one member who consume medicines during the whole year and mode of treatment are found to have significant impact on the household average monthly health expenditure. Some explanatory variables like at least one member in a households having Swasthya Sathi card or not, having livestock or not and number of meals a household consume per day becomes insignificant bur their coefficient has expected sign.