Abstract
We attempt to determine how parental bargaining impacts the allocation of the family budget on child health. We developed a standard utility maximization problem for a representative family using a Cobb–Douglas utility function. We find that the child health is not affected by the bargaining power of the parents and their individual preferences. Rather, parental income and the output elasticity of child health input increases child health. The theoretical findings observed in the study are corroborated by suitable empirical findings.
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Notes
In our theoretical construct we are not going to focus on gender issues in health care though. These are, however, very serious concern and one should attempt to decipher the theoretical underpinnings for such a worrying dimension.
One interesting indication of such an argument is that the mother-in-law here becomes a protagonist of the patriarchal society, and hence her autonomy reflects the mechanism of strengthening the autonomy of the male member of the family. So, this is a kind of caveat for our theoretical opinion.
We assume the bargaining power of the father and mother as exogenously given. Thus, we do not determine their bargaining power.
A composite good is made up of a variety of products, including, for example, food (both for parents and their child) and other domestic necessities, fitness products and medications necessary for the well-being of parents. The latter two were what was being discussed in the referred sentence.
As price rises for any respective commodity, the demand for the particular commodity falls.
That is, if we don’t assume \({\gamma }_{f}={\delta }_{f}\) and \({\gamma }_{m}={\delta }_{m}\) as we have assumed before.
Given her propensity for improving children's health, her autonomy, would always increase expenditure for child-health product in this situation.
The second assumption, where we assumed \(( {\gamma }_{f}+{\gamma }_{m})=1=({\delta }_{f}+{\delta }_{m})\), and \({\gamma }_{f}\ne {\delta }_{f}\) and \({\gamma }_{m}\ne {\delta }_{m}\).
Given, they both have a strong desire to improve child health.
Micro-level data of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), available from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) website. For a detailed report on India by The Demographic and Health Survey 2022, kindly visit https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR375/FR375.pdfandhttps://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR375/FR375_II.pdf.
The wealth index is calculated using a variety of factors, including the availability of different household assets and vehicles, the number of livestocks, the acres of agricultural land, the availability of electricity, sources of drinking water, the type of toilet facility, and the type of house (flooring, exterior wall material, etc.) (The Demographic and Health Survey 2004; Mishra and Dilip 2008). Due to a number of disadvantages, the DHS does not compute the wealth index using the income and expenditure technique. Rather, it considers wealth as an underlying unobserved variable, and evaluates a household’s relative position in the distribution of wealth in a given society. For more details, kindly visit https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/CR6/CR6.pdf.
In India, a person’s caste is determined at birth; that is, it is inherited. However, readers are asked to not confuse between ‘caste’ and ‘class’. Class generally groups a homogeneous set of people based on their income, education, wealth etc. you can find more on https://www.lkouniv.ac.in/site/writereaddata/siteContent/202003251903229591vidya_bajpai_Caste_system.pdf.
We have used the word ‘bargaining power’ and ‘autonomy’ interchangeably, as essence of both the words are same.
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Mandal, B., Bhattacharyya, B. & Chaudhuri, S. Parental bargaining and child health: a theoretical note. SN Bus Econ 4, 44 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-024-00637-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-024-00637-2