IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/euriss/38648.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Self-reported health care seeking behavior in rural Ethiopia: Evidence from clinical vignettes

Author

Listed:
  • Mebratie, A.D.
  • Van de Poel, E.
  • Debebe, Z.Y.
  • Abebaw, D.
  • Alemu, G.
  • Bedi, A.S.

Abstract

Between 2000 and 2011, Ethiopia rapidly expanded its health-care infrastructure recording an 18-fold increase in the number of health posts and a 7-fold increase in the number of health centers. However, annual per capita outpatient utilization has increased only marginally. The extent to which individuals forego necessary health care, especially why and who foregoes care are issues that have received little attention in the context of low-income countries. This paper uses five clinical vignettes covering a range of context-specific child and adult-related diseases to explore the health-seeking behavior of rural Ethiopian households. We find almost universal preference for modern care. There is a systematic relationship between socioeconomic status and choice of providers mainly for adult-related conditions with households in higher consumption quintiles more likely to seek care in health centers, private/NGO clinics as opposed to health posts. Similarly, delays in care-seeking behavior are apparent mainly for adult-related conditions. The differences in care seeking behavior between adult and child related conditions may be attributed to the recent spread of health posts which have focused on raising awareness of maternal and child health. Overall, the analysis suggests that the lack of health-care utilization is not driven by the inability to recognize health problems or due to a low perceived need for modern care but due to other factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Mebratie, A.D. & Van de Poel, E. & Debebe, Z.Y. & Abebaw, D. & Alemu, G. & Bedi, A.S., 2013. "Self-reported health care seeking behavior in rural Ethiopia: Evidence from clinical vignettes," ISS Working Papers - General Series 551, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    • Handle: RePEc:ems:euriss:38648
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/38648/wp551.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adamson, Joy & Ben-Shlomo, Yoav & Chaturvedi, Nish & Donovan, Jenny, 2003. "Ethnicity, socio-economic position and gender--do they affect reported health--care seeking behaviour?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 895-904, September.
    2. Teresa Bago d'Uva & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Maarten Lindeboom & Owen O'Donnell, 2008. "Does reporting heterogeneity bias the measurement of health disparities?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 351-375, March.
    3. Assefa Admassie & Degnet Abebaw & Andinet Woldemichael, 2009. "Impact evaluation of the Ethiopian Health Services Extension Programme," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(4), pages 430-449.
    4. Kirstin Grosse Frie & Terje Eikemo & Olaf von dem Knesebeck, 2010. "Education and self-reported health care seeking behaviour in European welfare regimes: results from the European Social Survey," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 55(3), pages 217-220, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Håvard T Rydland & Erlend L Fjær & Terje A Eikemo & Tim Huijts & Clare Bambra & Claus Wendt & Ivana Kulhánová & Pekka Martikainen & Chris Dibben & Ramunė Kalėdienė & Carme Borrell & Mall Leinsalu & Ma, 2020. "Educational inequalities in mortality amenable to healthcare. A comparison of European healthcare systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-17, July.
    2. William H. Greene & Mark N. Harris & Rachel J. Knott & Nigel Rice, 2021. "Specification and testing of hierarchical ordered response models with anchoring vignettes," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 184(1), pages 31-64, January.
    3. Knott, R. & Lorgelly, P. & Black, N. & Hollingsworth, B., 2016. "Differential item functioning in the EQ-5D: An exploratory analysis using anchoring vignettes," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 16/14, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Teresa Bago d'Uva & Maarten Lindeboom & Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2011. "Education‐related inequity in healthcare with heterogeneous reporting of health," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(3), pages 639-664, July.
    5. Fredrik Carlsen & Stefan Leknes, 2022. "For whom are cities good places to live?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(12), pages 2177-2190, December.
    6. Jorge E. Araña & Carmelo J. León, 2012. "Scale-perception bias in the valuation of environmental risks," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(20), pages 2607-2617, July.
    7. Gimenez-Nadal, J. Ignacio & Molina, Jose Alberto, 2015. "Health status and the allocation of time: Cross-country evidence from Europe," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 188-203.
    8. Devillanova, Carlo & Raitano, Michele & Struffolino, Emanuela, 2019. "Longitudinal employment trajectories and health in middle life: Insights from linked administrative and survey data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 40, pages 1375-1412.
    9. Srikant Devaraj & Marcus T. Wolfe & Pankaj C. Patel, 2021. "Creative destruction and regional health: evidence from the US," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 573-604, April.
    10. Simon Jean-Baptiste Combes & Nathalie Simonnot & Fabienne Azzedine & Abdessamad Aznague & Pierre Chauvin, 2019. "Self-Perceived Health among Migrants Seen in Médecins du Monde Free Clinics in Europe: Impact of Length of Stay and Wealth of Country of Origin on Migrants’ Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(24), pages 1-14, December.
    11. Cinzia Di Novi & Anna Marenzi & Dino Rizzi, 2018. "Do healthcare tax credits help poor-health individuals on low incomes?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(2), pages 293-307, March.
    12. Maria Alessandra Antonelli & Giorgia Marini, 2023. "Good health with good institutions. An empirical analysis for italian regions," Public Finance Research Papers 61, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    13. Di Novi, C. & Piacenza, M. & Robone, S. & Turati, G., 2015. "How does fiscal decentralization affect within-regional disparities in well-being? Evidence from health inequalities in Italy," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 15/23, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    14. Florence Jusot & Sandy Tubeuf & Alain Trannoy, 2010. "Effort or Circumstances: Does the Correlation Matter for Inequality of Opportunity in Health?," Working Papers DT33, IRDES institut for research and information in health economics, revised Jul 2010.
    15. Bertoni, Marco, 2015. "Hungry today, unhappy tomorrow? Childhood hunger and subjective wellbeing later in life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 40-53.
    16. Bethlehem A. Argaw, 2017. "Regional inequality of economic outcomes and opportunities in Ethiopia: A tale of two periods," WIDER Working Paper Series 118, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Gabriella Berloffa & Francesca Paolini, 2019. "Decomposing Immigrant Differences in Physical and Mental Health: A 'Beyond the Mean' Analysis," DEM Working Papers 2019/4, Department of Economics and Management.
    18. C. GEAY & M. KOUBI & G. de LAGASNERIE, 2015. "Evolution of outpatient healthcare expenditure, a dynamic micro-simulation using the Destinie model," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2015-15, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.
    19. Fontaine, Xavier & Haywood, Luke, 2018. "On the comparison of group inequalities using subjective data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 17-21.
    20. David Johnston & Carol Propper & Stephen Pudney & Michael Shields, 2014. "Child Mental Health And Educational Attainment: Multiple Observers And The Measurement Error Problem," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 880-900, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ethiopia; clinical vignettes; foregone care; health care seeking behavior;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ems:euriss:38648. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: RePub The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask RePub to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/issssnl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.