Financial deficit by rural / urban areas (% of population not covered due to financial resource deficit) (%) (discontinued)

This indicator is a proxy for the quality of health care. It represents the percentage of the population without access to health care due to financial resource deficit. The threshold for having sufficient financial resources is US$239 per person per year. A higher figure indicates worse levels of coverage. To estimate the quality of health care, this indicator uses as a proxy the relative difference between per capita health expenditure in a given country and its median value in countries with a low level of vulnerability.To establish whether a country is spending 'enough' or has 'enough' key health workers, it is necessary first to define what constitutes 'enough', i.e. set a threshold against which a country's performance can be compared. Opinions differ on what constitutes 'enough' in these contexts, not least because it is likely to be a moving target, influenced by prevailing health issues, demography etc. The ILO's approach for measuring financial deficit is to: (i) calculate the median expenditure on health (excluding OOP) in low-vulnerability countries, then (ii) for each country, compare spending against this median. In 2014, the median in low-vulnerability countries was US$239. For example, a country spending 50% less than the median in low-vulnerability countries has a financial deficit of 50%. This is one of five indicators measuring key dimensions of deficits in health care access and coverage. For analytical purposes the full set of indicators should be considered together.