Effect of Income Disparities on Healthcare in the COVID-19 Era
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the discussion on the importance of health on long term well-being of any economy. It has also been a challenging time, having hurt economies in a world already seeing declining economic growth. While vaccination globally has been picking up speed, this paper is an attempt to establish a relationship between income levels of different Indian states and its empirical effect on healthcare outcomes and policy implementation through the study of indicators such as Infant Mortality rate in the pre-pandemic world and COVID-19 vaccination. Using secondary data, we have developed regression models to understand the effect of COVID-19 on the income-health relationship. Through our research we have been able to identify that income level, and in effect income disparities, do have a significant positive relationship with healthcare, and that the pandemic has deepened this relationship. Further, we have looked into other factors that may help us explain the reasons behind this relationship, including healthcare infrastructure, public health expenditure and other social factors in the context of Indian states.
Keywords: Indian states; public health indicators; income disparity; COVID-19; vaccination; health expenditure
Metadata Record
References 16
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