Equity of Health Care Financing: An Application to Iran

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes inequality in Iranʹs health system from a financing perspective. Through grouped data of household budget published by Iran Statistic Center (ISC) and Beta Lorenz curve introduced in Kakwani (1980), it has been tried to extract Beta Lorenz curve and Kakwani progressivity index in each individual rural and urban district, and also to obtain other inequality measure in (1997-2007) period. Then to study health inequality for the given period, we divided it into two sub-periods: (1997-2001) and (2002-2007) and finally to compare health inequality, using Bootstrap technique, we made a pseudo statistical population. Results show a degree of descending progressively in urban areas while in rural areas it has witnessed a slight improvement. However as the results show in both rural and urban areas, because of the negativity of Kakwaniʹs index of the household expenditure which is financed by them is not progressive at all. Also the ratios of share richest quintile to poorest quintile for health care in urban and rural areas are 8.79 and 8.01 respectively.