INTRODUCTION This study assesses trends in horizontal equity in the utilization of healthcare services from 1998 to 2008--a period of major economic and social change in Brazil. METHODS Data are from nationally representative surveys repeated in 1998, 2003, and 2008. We apply established methods for assessing horizontal inequity in healthcare access (the principle that people with the same he...

BACKGROUND The phenomenon of inequitable healthcare utilization in rural China interests policymakers and researchers; however, the inequity has not been actually measured to present the magnitude and trend using nationally representative data. METHODS Based on the National Health Service Survey (NHSS) in 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008, the Probit model with the probability of outpatient visit an...

BACKGROUND Reimbursement systems provide incentives to health care providers and may drive physician behaviour. This review assesses the impact of reimbursement system on socioeconomic and racial inequalities in access, utilization and quality of primary care. METHODS A systematic search was performed in Web of Science and PubMed for English language studies published between 1980 and 2013, s...

Adults and children are willing to sacrifice personal gain to avoid both disadvantageous and advantageous inequity. These two forms of inequity aversion follow different developmental trajectories, with disadvantageous inequity aversion emerging around 4 years and advantageous inequity aversion emerging around 8 years. Although inequity aversion is assumed to be specific to situations where res...

Despite progressive universal drug coverage and pharmaceutical policies found in other countries, Canada remains the only developed nation with a publicly funded healthcare system that does not include universal coverage for prescription drugs. In the absence of a national pharmacare plan, a province may choose to cover a specific sub-population for certain drugs. Altho...

The standard contract theory adopts the traditional hypothesis of pure self-interest. However, a series of game experiments have proven that people are not any self-interest but also inequity averse. Then, how will the inequity aversion influence the optimal contract for multiple agents? This paper attempts to obtain new theoretical insights by incorporating inequity aversion into the standard ...