Original Article

Iranian Households’ Payments on Food and Health Out-of-Pocket Expenditures: Evidence of Inequality

Abstract

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.

Files
IssueVol 44 No 8 (2015) QRcode
SectionOriginal Article(s)
Keywords
Food expenditure Out-of-Pocket health expenditure Inequality Gini coefficient Concentration index Kakwani index

Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
GHIASVAND H, NAGHDI S, ABOLHASSANI N, SHAARBAFCHIZADEH N, MOGHRI J. Iranian Households’ Payments on Food and Health Out-of-Pocket Expenditures: Evidence of Inequality. Iran J Public Health. 2015;44(8):1103-1113.