Empirical Analysis of Health and Educational Attainment in Turkey

Abstract

The overall aim of this thesis is to examine and analyse three separate yet related issues in health and education that have been attracting increasing attention on the policy agenda in Turkey, especially over the recent decade. Public policy attention has particularly been devoted to issues such as financial protection against health care costs, decreasing the smoking prevalence rate and closing the gender gap in educational attainment. One of the main reasons behind the interest of policy makers in these areas may be attributed to need of the country to enhance human capital as well as to its aim to fulfill the requirements for EU membership. This provides the motivation for the empirical analyses presented in this thesis which investigate these issues in depth and, where relevant, provide policy implications. The first empirical study presented in Chapter 2 investigates the prevalence of ‘catastrophic’ out-of-pocket health care expenditure in Turkey and identifies the factors which are associated with its risk. The results indicate that poverty is an important barrier to seeking health care and that poverty is inversely associated with the risk of incurring catastrophic health expenditure. Chapter 3 examines the determinants of adult smoking propensity and intensity from a gender perspective. The findings of this chapter are twofold. First, the factors associated with smoking participation differ from the factors associated with the level of cigarette consumption. Second, the determinants of smoking behaviour are found to be different across males and females. The third empirical study is presented in Chapter 4 and aims to examine the educational attainment of girls and boys at the primary and secondary education levels. The findings indicate that the determinants of educational attainment and the potential factors that are associated with gender inequality differ by the level of education