The socio-economic determinants of alternative sources of antenatal care in Turkey.

This paper tries to ascertain the factors affecting the choice of alternative sources for antenatal care. The analysis is based on data collected from ever-married women in the 1998 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS). The developing country setting provides substantial variation in the type of facility chosen, ranging from no antenatal care, to formal health care personnel, to modern private hospitals. The alternatives vary greatly in quality and price, making this an ideal context for examining the role of these variables in choosing a facility. The logit model specifications estimated individual, household-level and community-level characteristics of the women in the urban and rural sample as well as in the total sample in this study. The estimation results indicate that individual characteristics such as educational attainment and birth order are significant determinants of choosing alternative sources for antenatal care. The results also indicate that household-level characteristics such as health insurance coverage, car ownership, household assets and community-level characteristics are the other significant determinants of using alternative sources for antenatal care.