Measurement of inequity in health care delivery has focused on the extent to which health care utilisation is or is not distributed according to need, irrespective of income. Studies using cross-sectional data have proposed various ways of measuring and standardizing for need, but inevitably much of the inter-individual variation in needs remains unobserved in cross-sections. This paper exploit...

BACKGROUND Egypt's longstanding commitment to safe motherhood and maternal health has paid off in substantial declines in maternal mortality ratio and significant improvement in the levels of many maternal health indicators. The current study aims to monitor trends of maternal health indicators and their socioeconomic inequities among Egyptian women over ten-year period (1995-2005). It poses th...

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 horizontal inequity. Income-related inequality in utilization is split into four major sources: (i) direct...

BACKGROUND The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was introduced in Ghana to ensure equity in healthcare access. Presently, some low and middle income countries including Ghana are using social health insurance schemes to reduce inequity in access to healthcare. In Ghana, the NHIS was introduced to address the problem of inequity in healthcare access in a period that was characterised by u...

Adina Preda and Kristin Voigt should be commended for bridging the gap between moral philosophy and health policy. While I am convinced by much of their analysis of what they call the Health Equity as Social Change (HESC) model, I am not certain they are correct to claim that " in the HESC model, 'avoidability' appears as both a necessary and sufficient condition for health inequity " (Preda an...

M embers and Fellows of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health showed their recognition of the need to respond to the appalling conditions in which the majority of the world’s children live. They did this in 2001 when they unanimously voted for a proportion of their annual College subscription to be used for international advocacy and education and training programmes in resource-poo...

An appreciation of the role of social and emotional well-being in determining health outcomes is important in advancing the equity agenda.(1) These aspects of health are adversely affected by inequity. They also are important as potential causal factors. Low levels of emotional and social well-being among the rich may be important in perpetuating health and social inequity. In the past, most re...

Elucidating how inequity aversion (a tendency to dislike and correct unequal outcomes) functions as one develops is important to understanding more complex fairness considerations in adulthood. Although previous research has demonstrated that adults and children reduce inequity, it is unclear if people are actually responding negatively to inequity or if people dislike others getting more than ...

Pursuit of equity in health and health care has been the key feature of health policy in India. Despite the policy significance, the volume of literature on this important topic is very inadequate in the Indian context. This paper, for the first time seeks to provide evidence on horizontal inequity in health care utilization in 16 major states and north-eastern region of India. The number of ou...

The global financial crisis of 2008 has led to the reinforcement of patient cost sharing in health care policy. This study aimed to explore the impact of direct out-of pocket payments (OOPs) on health care utilization and the resulting financial burden across income groups under the South Korean National Health Insurance (NHI) program with universal population coverage. We used the fourth Korea...