INCOME ELASTICITY OF HOUSEHOLD’S HEALTH AND WELLNESS IN RURAL PAKISTAN

This study investigates the income elasticity of health in rural areas of Pakistan. It was conducted during 2019-20 to find out the responsiveness of health expenses proportionate to the earnings of rural people of the country. Multistage sampling technique was used for data collection from 180 respondents from two districts, i.e., Toba Tek Singh district from Punjab province and Tando Allahyar district from Sindh province. The respondents were categorized into three income groups – low, medium, and high – and were interviewed to find out that what portion of income of each group is being directly or indirectly on their health and wellness. The findings show that the low, medium, and high-income groups were spending about 17.7, 7.7 and 4.2 percent of their income on health and wellness, respectively. Further, it was observed that with the increase of income, the low income group will spend another 8.8 percent on health as compared to the medium, and high-income groups, who will lower the expenses on health by 0.6 and 0.09 percent, respectively. Due to large family size i.e., 9.7 persons per family, most of them were unable to fulfill the basic nutritional requirements in daily food. Moreover, in case of emergency, low-income group either uses home-made medicines (totkas) or pays visits to the unauthorized doctors called hakeem. While medium and high-income groups prefer to visit the private hospitals, due to insufficient healthcare facilities at the public hospitals.