We estimate the impact on out-of-pocket (OOP) medical expenditure of a major reform in Thailand that greatly extended health insurance coverage to achieve universality while implementing supply-side measures intended to deliver cost-effective care from an increased, but modest, public health...

We estimate the distributional incidence of health care financing in 13 Asian territories that account for 55% of the Asian population. In all territories, higher-income households contribute more to the financing of health care. The better-off contribute more as a proportion of ability to pay...

Over a five-year period in the 1990s Vietnam experienced annual economic growth of more than 8% and a 15 point decrease in the proportion of children chronically malnourished (stunted). We estimate the extent to which changes in the distribution of child nutritional status can be explained by...

A strong cross-sectional relationship between health and socioeconomic status is firmly established. This paper adopts a life cycle perspective to investigate whether the socioeconomically disadvantaged, on top of a lower health level, experience a sharper deterioration of health over time. Data...

An age-cohort decomposition applied to panel data identifies how the mean, overall inequality and income-related inequality of self-assessed health evolve over the life cycle and differ across generations in 11 EU countries. There is a moderate and steady decline in mean health until the age of...

This paper compares the extent to which the principle of "equal treatment for equal need"(ETEN) is maintained in the health care delivery systems of Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. Deviations in the degree to which health care is distributed according to need are measured by an index of...

We quantify, track and explain the distribution of overweight and of hypertension across Chinese provinces differentiated by their degree of urbanicity over the period 1991-2004. We construct an index of urbanicity from longitudinal data on community characteristics from the China Health and...

On average, child health outcomes are better in urban than in rural areas of developing countries. Understanding the nature and the causes of this rural-urban disparity is essential in contemplating the health consequences of the rapid urbanization taking place throughout the developing world...