INFLUENCE OF INCOME AND EDUCATION ON HOUSEHOLD HEALTH EXPENDITURE: THE CASE OF TRIBAL ORISSA

Most of the health economics researches dealt with macro aspects of it. Little attention has been given to the micro aspects of Health Economics by the researchers, government, policy makers and development planners. In this context the present study examines the effect of income and education of the household on its health expenditure based on primary data. The descriptive statistics for tribal area shows that per head income (PHI) is Rs. 5143.75 per annum with 2555.27 and 0.5 as standard deviation and coefficient variation respectively where as per head health expenditure (PHE) is Rs. 108.13 per annum with 91.36 and 0.84 as standard deviation and coefficient variation respectively. The mean education is 0.22 with 0.41 and 1.91 as standard deviation and coefficient variation respectively. To find out the impact of household income (PHI) and education of the head of the household (EDN) on the pattern of health expenditure (PHE) a linear regression model is found to be fitted as PHET = 31.37 + 0.43PHI + 0.06EDN with R2 value 0.18, which indicates that, ceteris paribus, a rupee increase income brings about forty-three paise increase health expenditure and an educated person on an average spends six paise more in a rupee than the uneducated person on health expenditure in tribal area.