Open AccessEffect of Income Disparities on Healthcare in the COVID-19 Era
Author(s) -
Shailika Verma,
Sanshita Vij,
Konika Rai,
Ansh Goyal
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
south asian research journal of humanities and social sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2664-6714
pISSN - 2664-4002
DOI - 10.36346/sarjhss.2022.v04i01.001
Subject(s) - pandemic , health care , context (archaeology) , demographic economics , covid-19 , development economics , economics , economic growth , public economics , geography , medicine , disease , archaeology , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the discussion on the importance of health on long term well-being of any economy. It has also been a challenging time, having hurt economies in a world already seeing declining economic growth. While vaccination globally has been picking up speed, this paper is an attempt to establish a relationship between income levels of different Indian states and its empirical effect on healthcare outcomes and policy implementation through the study of indicators such as Infant Mortality rate in the pre-pandemic world and COVID-19 vaccination. Using secondary data, we have developed regression models to understand the effect of COVID-19 on the income-health relationship. Through our research we have been able to identify that income level, and in effect income disparities, do have a significant positive relationship with healthcare, and that the pandemic has deepened this relationship. Further, we have looked into other factors that may help us explain the reasons behind this relationship, including healthcare infrastructure, public health expenditure and other social factors in the context of Indian states.