Catastrophic Health Expenditure and Household Well-Being

Ramses H. Abul Naga (1) , Karine Lamiraud (2)

1 IEMS - Institut d'économie et de management de la santé
2 ESSEC Business School

According to the catastrophic health expenditure methodology a house-hold is in catastrophe if its health out-of-pocket budget share exceeds a critical threshold. We develop a conceptual framework for addressing three questions in relation to this methodology, namely: 1. Can a budget share be informative about the sign of a change in welfare? 2. Is there a positive association between a household’s poverty shortfall and its health out-of-pocket budget share? 3. Does an increase in coverage of a health insurance scheme always result in a reduction of the prevalence of catastrophic ex-penditures?

Mots clés: Catastrophic health expenditure; welfare change; poverty; performance of health insurance schemes

Domaines: Economies et finances

Ramses H. Abul Naga, Karine Lamiraud. Catastrophic Health Expenditure and Household Well-Being. 2011, pp.25. ⟨hal-00592139⟩