Do men and women have equal access to health care?

Evidence on health care utilisation in Nigeria (joint with Alice Mesnard and Wendy Janssens)

Abstract

This paper explores the effect of price, distance and quality in explaining the choice of health providers in Nigeria. We use a rich dataset from the state of Kwara which includes information on the entire portfolio of health facility available to the households living in rural areas and examine the determinants of health seeking behaviour by estimating alternative discrete choice models. In contrast to most of the literature, we correct for the endogeneity of price using a control function approach and show that our results are sensitive to the instrumentation of price. The findings show that price, distance and quality are strong determinants of health provider choice. We also find evidence of gender differences in the response to price, suggesting that women demand for formal health care is more responsive to price changes.

Elisa Cavatorta

Dr Elisa Cavatorta is a Lecturer in Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy and BA/BSc Political Economy Programme director. Her main research interests are in the fields of development economics, behavioural and experimental economics. Elisa holds a PhD in Economics from Birkbeck, University of London. Before joining the department, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at SOAS, University of London and she taught at Birkbeck and City, University of London. Most of Elisa’s research focuses on the Middle East region, where she worked as a researcher at the FAO and various research institutions.