Health Knowledge of Mother and Its Association with Child Morbidity, Medical Care and Medical Care Expenditure in India

Shraboni Patra, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Perianayagam Arokiasamy, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Srinivas Goli, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

In Indian context, this study is a first time effort to assess health knowledge of women and its association with prevalence of short-term morbidities, medical-care and medical-expenditure among children in age-group 0-59 months by using nationwide data(IHDS,2005). The findings indicate that though, it's well accepted that there’s a positive impact of education on health, still, immaculate health knowledge is required for mother to understand her child’s health problems; otherwise misconception might lead to adverse health outcomes. Evidential insights from this study stipulate that though, socio-economic factors are important predictors of child-morbidities; there’s a huge variation in the prevalence of child-morbidities within the socio-economic groups by health knowledge of their mothers. Similar pattern of results are also indicated for medical-care and related expenditure on child-morbidities. Findings suggest that a health knowledge index could be an important composite predictor of health standing of the population of a given country or community.