IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2016-135.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political agency and public healthcare: Evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Joan Costa-Font
  • Divya Parmar

Abstract

The development of institutions of self-governance in India, and specifically the 2005 reform—the National Rural Health Mission that introduced village health and sanitation committees—provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of the strengthening of the political agency on collective healthcare decision-making in rural areas. We use data from the District Level Household Survey and take advantage of the heterogeneity of maternal and child healthcare use, before and after the introduction of village health and sanitation committees.

Suggested Citation

  • Joan Costa-Font & Divya Parmar, 2016. "Political agency and public healthcare: Evidence from India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-135, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2016-135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2016-135.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Betancourt, Roger & Gleason, Suzanne, 2000. "The Allocation of Publicly-Provided Goods to Rural Households in India: On Some Consequences of Caste, Religion and Democracy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2169-2182, December.
    2. Timothy Besley & Rohini Pande & Vijayendra Rao, 2005. "Participatory Democracy in Action: Survey Evidence from South India," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 648-657, 04/05.
    3. Singh, Nirvikar, 2008. "Decentralization and Public Delivery of Health Care Services in India," MPRA Paper 7869, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Pranab Bardhan, 2002. "Decentralization of Governance and Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 185-205, Fall.
    5. Jishnu Das & Alaka Holla & Aakash Mohpal & Karthik Muralidharan, 2016. "Quality and Accountability in Health Care Delivery: Audit-Study Evidence from Primary Care in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(12), pages 3765-3799, December.
    6. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    7. Santosh Kumar & Nishith Prakash, 2012. "Political Decentralization, Women's Reservation and Child Health Outcomes: A Case Study of Rural Bihar," Working papers 2012-18, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    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. Joan Costa-Font & Divya Parmar, 2016. "Political agency and public healthcare: Evidence from India," WIDER Working Paper Series 135, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Timothy Besley & Rohini Pande & Vijayendra Rao, 2012. "Just Rewards? Local Politics and Public Resource Allocation in South India," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 26(2), pages 191-216.
    3. Gradstein, Mark, 2017. "Government decentralization as a commitment in non-democracies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 110-118.
    4. Pal, Sarmistha & Wahhaj, Zaki, 2017. "Fiscal decentralisation, local institutions and public good provision: evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 383-409.
    5. Emilie Caldeira & Martial Foucault & Gregoire Rota-Graziosi, 2015. "Decentralization in Africa and the nature of local governments’ competition: evidence from Benin," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(6), pages 1048-1076, December.
    6. Emilie Caldeira, 2012. "Does the System of Allocation of Intergovernmental Transfers in Senegal Eliminate Politically Motivated Targeting?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(2), pages 167-191, March.
    7. Park, Albert & Wang, Sangui, 2010. "Community-based development and poverty alleviation: An evaluation of China's poor village investment program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 790-799, October.
    8. Farzanegan, Mohammad Reza & Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2018. "Natural resource rents and internal conflicts: Can decentralization lift the curse?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 186-205.
    9. Yuvraj Pathak & Karen Macours, 2017. "Women’s Political Reservation, Early Childhood Development, and Learning in India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(4), pages 741-766.
    10. Neha Kumar, 2007. "Pro-Poor Targeting and Participatory Governance: Evidence from Central India," Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series dp-176, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    11. Mu, Ren & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2014. "Do elected leaders in a limited democracy have real power? Evidence from rural China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 17-27.
    12. Rabia Nazir & Muhammad Nasir & Idrees Khawaja, 2022. "Political Budget Cycle: A Sub-National Evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 18(3), pages 343-367, November.
    13. Pranab Bardhan & Dilip Mookherjee, 2005. "Decentralization, Corruption and Government Accountability: An Overview," Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series dp-152, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    14. Ivar Kolstad & Arne Wiig & Vincent Somville, 2014. "Devolutionary delusions? The effect of decentralization on corruption," CMI Working Papers 10, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    15. Francesco Burchi & Karan Singh, 2020. "Women’s Political Representation and Educational Attainments: A District-level Analysis in India," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 15(1), pages 7-33, April.
    16. Speer, Johanna, 2012. "Participatory Governance Reform: A Good Strategy for Increasing Government Responsiveness and Improving Public Services?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(12), pages 2379-2398.
    17. Mu, Ren & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2011. "The role of elected and appointed village leaders in the allocation of public resources: Evidence from a low-income region in China," IFPRI discussion papers 1061, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    18. Anirban Mitra & Sarmistha Pal, 2022. "Ethnic Diversity, Social Norms and Elite Capture: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(356), pages 947-996, October.
    19. Mark Gradstein, 2014. "Government Decentralization as a Commitment," CESifo Working Paper Series 4809, CESifo.
    20. Bibek Adhikari & Saroj Dhital, 2021. "Decentralization and regional convergence: Evidence from night‐time lights data," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1066-1088, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decentralization; Direct democracy; Immunization; Maternal healthcare; Public healthcare; Agency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2016-135. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.