ABSTRACT
Rising prices put a lot of strain on below-poverty-line (BPL) families, often aggravating their financial distress even as income levels remain static. This paper employs freshly revised forms of the Modified B.G. Prasad and Modified Kuppuswamy socioeconomic status (SES) gradations, normalized according to the Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (CPI-IW), in an attempt to describe how inflationary patterns affect the financial security of economically underprivileged Indian homes. Special focus is given to out-of-pocket healthcare spending, which represents an important economic burden on BPL families and is likely to compromise healthcare system effectiveness. Using careful inflation adjustment methods, we examine changes in income cutoffs and assess overall implications for healthcare utilization and access to vulnerable populations. Our results show that families with fixed incomes have witnessed a 43.2% loss of purchasing power between 2016 and 2025 while, at the same time, suffering from catastrophic healthcare spending averaging 27% of yearly household spending. Such dual burden compels unfavorable healthcare choices with long-term implications for the health outcomes of individuals as well as the sustainability of healthcare systems, highlighting the need for inflation-sensitive social protection and healthcare financing reforms.
