Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data: A Guide to Techniques and Their Implementation

This book shows how to implement a
\n variety of analytic tools that allow health equity - along
\n different dimensions and in different spheres - to be
\n quantified. Questions that the techniques can help provide
\n answers for include the following: Have gaps in health
\n outcomes between the poor and the better-off grown in
\n specific countries or in the developing world as a whole?
\n Are they larger in one country than in another? Are health
\n sector subsidies more equally distributed in some countries
\n than in others? Is health care utilization equitably
\n distributed in the sense that people in equal need receive
\n similar amounts of health care irrespective of their income?
\n Are health care payments more progressive in one health care
\n financing system than in another? What are catastrophic
\n payments? How can they be measured? How far do health care
\n payments impoverish households? This volume has a simple
\n aim: to provide researchers and analysts with a step-by-step
\n practical guide to the measurement of a variety of aspects
\n of health equity. Each chapter includes worked examples and
\n computer code. The authors hope that these guides, and the
\n easy-to-implement computer routines contained in them, will
\n stimulate yet more analysis in the field of health equity,
\n especially in developing countries. They hope this, in turn,
\n will lead to more comprehensive monitoring of trends in
\n health equity, a better understanding of the causes of these
\n inequities, more extensive evaluation of the impacts of
\n development programs on health equity, and more effective
\n policies and programs to reduce inequities in the health sector.