Abstract
This paper investigates the economic consequences of sickness and death and the manner in which poor urban households in Bangladesh respond to such events. Based on longitudinal data we assess the effects of morbidity and mortality episodes on household income, medical spending, labour supply and consumption. We find that despite maintaining household labour supply, a serious illness exerts a negative effect on household income for the poor. However, the estimates do not reject consumption smoothing. The most prominent response to finance current needs is to borrow from money lenders, which leads to an increase in household debt-to-income ratios with possible detrimental effects on future consumption.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | The Hague |
| Publisher | International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) |
| Number of pages | 37 |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Publication series
| Series | ISS working papers. General series |
|---|---|
| Volume | 587 |
Bibliographical note
hdl.handle.net/1765/51366Md. Farid Uddin Khan (?)
Farid U Khan is an Assistant Professor of economics in the University of Rajshahi - one of the largest public universities in Bangladesh. Currently, he has been pursuing a PhD course in the Curtin University, Western Australia under the scholarship of International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (IPRS) from Australian government. He has been teaching as a sessional academic in Curtin University since 2013. He studied MA in Development Studies from the ISS under The Netherlands Fellowship Program in 2010.
Research programs
- EUR-ISS-EDEM
- EUR-ISS-SGI
Series
- ISS Working Paper-General Series