| Crynodeb: | This paper examines the multi-dimensional nature of urban poverty
with special emphasis on ill-health led deprivation. As a driver of
poverty, ill-health reduces the income earning potential and increases
expenditure on medication, thereby causing asset depletion, increasing
debt and worsening poverty. The bulk of ill-health related expenditure
in India is borne by households themselves and almost all of this is in
the form of out-of-pocket spending. Hence this paper attempts to
explore the links between urban poverty and ill-health through a case
study based on evidence from150 households with a history of
ailment, located in two slum clusters of Delhi. The paper explores
the patterns of morbidity, health care utilisation and treatment cost
within these households. It further estimates the economic burden
of ill-health as measured by illness induced impoverishment, and also
brings out its variation across select socio-economic and disease
characteristics within the sample households. Using this evidence, it
argues for explicitly raising existing poverty lines based on “norm
based” expenditure required for meeting the direct and indirect costs
of health shocks and their aftermath and for priority provisioning of
substantial government resources for the health sector.
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