iranian households’ payments on food and health out-of-pocket expenditures: evidence of inequality

background : inequality in households’ payments on food and health expenditures presents the accessibility and utili-zation patterns between them. this study investigated the iranian rural and urban households’ inequality in payments on food and out-of-pocket health expenditures from 1998 to 2012. methods : this descriptive study was conducted through the analysis of iranian statistics centre data on iranian households’ income and expenditures. the gini coefficients, concentration and kakwani indices have been calculat-ed for iranian rural and urban households’ out-of-pocket health and food expenditures. results : the means of iranian rural and urban total consumption expenditures inequality were 0.48 and 0.48, respec-tively. the means of concentration index of food expenditures for rural and urban regions were 0.35 and 0.34, respec-tively. the means of out-of-pocket payments for health services for rural and urban regions were 0.51 and 0.5, re-spectively. finally the means of kakwani index of out-of-pocket health payments in rural and urban households were -0.005 and -0.018, respectively. conclusion : there are relative high levels of inequality in iranian households’ payments on food and out-of-pocket health expenditures.