IV. CONCLUSIONS
Per capita income is the mostly wide discussed socioeconomic determinants of mortality,
as it is considered a summary of the ability of an economy to meet the needs of its citizens. The
impact of poverty (loosely speaking low per capita income) on ill health is well known and
extensively documented. Ill health can also be an important cause of poverty because it can lead
to loss of income, catastrophic health expenses, and orphanhood. Thus, improving health can
make a substantial contribution to target 1, which aims to halve between 1990 and 2015 the
proportionof people whose income is less than one US Dollar a day.
Well-educated people experience better health than the poor educated, as indicated by
high levels of self reported health and physical functioning and low levels of morbidity,
mortality and disability. In contrast, low educational attainment is associated with high rates of
infection disease, many chronic noninfectious diseases; self reported poor health, shorter survival
when sick, and shorter life expectancy. The positive association between health and
socioeconomic status, whether measured by education, occupation or income, is largely due to
the effects of socioeconomic status on health.
The study finds that income of the household has significant influence on its health
expenditure where as the effect of education is insignificant. From the study it is found that as
disposable income of the household increases, individual takes more care of his life, hence,
health expenditure increases but at a particular level of income, due to high life risk, health
expenditure becomes independent of income and perfectly elastic, which is termed as “High Life
Risk Path (HLRP)”. The health expenditure during HLRP depends on household’s past saving
and loanable capacity.