Health supplier quality and the distribution of child health

There is emerging evidence to suggest that initial differentials between thehealth of poor and more affluent children in the UK do not widen over earlychildhood. One reason may be that through the universal public funded healthcare system all children have access to equally effective primary care providers.This paper examines this explanation. The analysis has two components. It firstexamines whether children from poorer families have access to generalpractitioners of a similar quality to children from richer families. It thenexamines whether the quality of primary care to which a child has access has animpact on their health at birth and on their health during early childhood. Theresults suggest that children from poor families do not have access to markedlyworse quality primary care, and further, that the quality of primary care does notappear to have a large effect on differentials in child health in early childhood.[...]