Use of Medical Care: How People in Informal Employment Rate Access to Health Services Figure 2.8 Demand for better health services(first priority), by income 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Senegal Côte d'Ivoire less 0.5 MW Benin 0.5-1 MW Kenya >1 MW-2 MW Zambia >2 MW Ethiopia Note: MW= statutory minimum wage. Ethiopia has no statutory minimum wage. Categories for Ethiopia: less than 750 Birr; 750–1,500 Birr; 1,501–3,000 Birr; more than 3,000 Birr. Figure 2.9 Demand for better health services(first priority), by gender 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% Senegal 42.0% 45.4% Côte d'Ivoire 39.4% 43.1% Benin 34.5% 32.8% Kenya 25.9% 31.2% Zambia 22.4% 23.3% Ethiopia 19.5% 19.8% male female that of future needs. Sickness, its treatment and costs are daily problems for many people and draw more attention than future income after retirement. We tested the dependence of four factors on first priority voting and found a small to medium correlation with urban–rural living environment, no or only a small correla­tion with age, no correlation with gender, and no or only a small correlation with income inequality. As these factors are strong components of socio-economic class formation, internal stratification within the informal labour force has not emerged to an extent that it sets apart priorities for better state services socially. While we do not know what will hap­pen if income disparities are further deepened, we can state that the current level of income inequality does not produce disparities in priority setting for health. We thus obtain an interesting result: the use of medical care is strongly linked to social disparities, whereas the priority demand for health is not. If socio-economic factors are not yet at work to develop a differentiated need structure, we may consider our ranking to be typical of the informal labour force as a whole. As this segment of the labour market dominates the economy and encompasses between 80 and 90 per cent of total employ­ment, the vote profile can be generalized and assessed as a reflection of general significance within a country. Our argument that the availability of medical care and the urgency with which people demand improved services from 15