Mariapia Mendola () (University of Milan Bicocca and Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano) Caryn Bredenkamp () (The World Bank) Michele Gragnolati () (The World Bank)
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This paper investigates the extent to which the health systems of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo) have succeeded in providing financial protection against adverse health events. We examine disparities in health status, health care utilization and out-of-pocket payments for health care (including informal payments), and explore the impact of health care expenditures on household economic status and poverty. Data are drawn from LSMS surveys and methodologies include ‘catastrophic-health’ analysis, poverty incidence analysis adjusted for health payments, and multivariate regression analysis. On balance, we find that economic status is significantly associated with health care-seeking behavior in all transition economies and the cost of illness can increase the incidence and depth of poverty. The impoverishing effect of health expenditures is most severe in Albania and Kosovo, followed by Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. Moreover, health care costs seem to place a heavier burden on the weakest strata of the population, such as children and people with chronic illness, with serious consequences for the breaking out of the illness-poverty vicious circle.
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Paper provided by Centro Studi Luca d\'Agliano, University of Milano in its series Development Working Papers with number
243.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty P36 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Consumer Economics; Health, Education, Welfare, and Poverty