Socioeconomic Inequality in Health Care Utilization: A Study of Service Utilization in Yazd, Iran

Background: Determining the inequality in health and the gap level amongvarious socio-economic groups and factors affecting it were always concerns ofmost politicians and social scientists. This study investigated inequality inutilization of health care among Yazd residents in 2014.Methods: This analytic and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014. Theparticipants were all households of Yazd. The data were collected through a threepartquestionnaire including demographic factors, socio-economic factors, andutilization of health services. The number of samples was estimated to be 1037households selected by random stratified sampling. After administrating thequestionnaire in the form of interview, data were entered into the SPSS software.Later, factor analysis method was carried out and participants were categorizedbased on their social and economical status. Afterwards, using the logisticregression method, the correlation among variables was calculated and finally, formeasuring the concentration index, the stratified data were fed into Stata11 softwareversion 12/SE and analyzed.Results: According to the findings, there was no meaningful inequality in thedistribution of contagious and non-contagious decreases in the population understudy. Inequality in utilization of services for inpatient and outpatients during thepast 6 months in the five socio-economic groups was significant (P-value = 0.000).This shows that accumulation of visits occurred in richer groups of society. Also, itcan be claimed that self-treatment has greater accumulation in the poorer quintiles(CI = - 0.09).Conclusion: Inequality in benefitting from health services reflects the economicalsituation of households. As a result, it is expected that by taking steps to improvethe living conditions, the equity in service utilization will be increased.

Keywords:

Socio-Economic Inequality , Benefit , Health Care