Inequality in Maternal Health Care Utilisation in India: A Shapley Decomposition Analysis

摘要

The paper aims at decomposing income-related inequality in maternal health care utilisation in India using the Shapley value method. In India, the usage of maternal health care services remains low with highly uneven access across socio-economic groups. We analyse the income-related inequality in maternal health care utilisation and its determinants. The decomposition results show that the demand side variables, namely, economic status of household and education of parents, are important factors determining inequality in utilisation. Also, we find that availability of government health care facilities in village and implementation of Janani Suraksha Yojana in village do not reduce income-related inequality in utilisation. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.