Gender gaps in access to health care in rural China

The gender gap in household health care allocation is studied using survey data collected on 1,428 rural households (8,414 persons) in eight Chinese provinces namely Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hunan, Henan, Shanxi, Jilin, Sichuan and Gansu. Data used in the study come from two sources. One source is a March 2003 health survey on rural households in 48 villages of the eight provinces and the other is the National Fixed-Point Survey (NFS) maintained by China's Ministry of Agriculture. The present study focuses on the age structure of the gender gap and women and men's different responses to certain personal, family and village characteristics. Contrary to the market value hypothesis, it is observed that women get preferable treatment between the ages of 20 and 34. Nevertheless, men and women do not have different responses to specific household and village characteristics.