Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Catastrophic Health Expenditure

Yang, Wei (2015) Catastrophic Health Expenditure. In: Odekon, Mehmet, ed. Encyclopedia of world poverty. SAGE Publications, Inc, pp. 180-181. ISBN 978-1-4833-4570-3. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:41254)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-encyclop...

Abstract

A sound financing system should ensure a fair distribution of the burden of health costs, protect households against health shocks, and improve access to health services by promoting an equitable distribution of public expenditures. However, in many developing countries, health finance is still dominated by out-of-pocket (OOP) payments. Households without full health insurance coverage usually face a risk of incurring large medical care expenditures when a household member falls ill. If the healthcare expenses are large relative to the resources available to the household, these expenses may disrupt the living standards of the household. Households may have to reduce expenses on necessities such as food as a result of such large health expenditures. In some extreme cases, health expenses may lead to poverty. A household at a time of illness may divert expenditures to healthcare to an extent that its spending on basic necessities falls below the poverty line. For those who are already below the poverty threshold, they may sink further into poverty because of the adverse effects of illness and related expenses on their income and other welfare. An analysis of 108 surveys in 86 countries has revealed that catastrophic health expenditures are incurred by less than 1% of households in some countries and up to 13% in others.

Item Type: Book section
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance
R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research > Personal Social Services Research Unit
Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research > Centre for Health Services Studies
Depositing User: Tony Rees
Date Deposited: 02 Jun 2014 13:16 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 10:57 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/41254 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Yang, Wei.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.