Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditure: Impact on the Consumption of Indian Households

This paper examines whether out-of-pocket health expenditure affects the composition of household consumption. Based on Indian data, conditional Engel curves for 10 broad categories of goods and services, namely food, intoxicants, fuel, clothing and footwear, education, entertainment, travel, rent, durables and other goods have been estimated. Conditional Engel curves show whether the share of a particular good is increased or decreased in household consumption due to health expenditure. The findings suggest that poor households decrease the share of clothing and education and increase the share of food, fuel and travel. It has also been found that households from less developed states and from states with lower public health expenditure were more affected.