The 2018 database on Health Equity and Financial Protection indicators provides data on equity in the delivery of health service interventions and health outcomes, and on financial protection in health. This paper provides a brief history of the database, gives an overview of the contents of the...

In many low- and middle-income countries, health coverage has improved dramatically in the last two decades, but health outcomes have not. As such, effective coverage -- a measure of service delivery that meets a minimum standard of quality -- remains unacceptably low. This Policy Research...

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

Financial incentives for health providers and households are increasingly used to improve reproductive, maternal, and child health service coverage in low- and middle-income countries. This study provides a quantitative synthesis of their effectiveness. A systematic review was conducted of the...

This paper outlines changes that have been made in the 2019 version of the Health Equity and Financial Protection Indicators database. On the financial protection side, the changes include an increase in the number of indicators from five to 14; revisions to several previous data points,...

This paper provides an overview of research on out-of-pocket health expenditures, reviewing the various summary measures and the results of multi-country studies using these measures. The paper presents estimates for 146 countries from all World Bank income groups for all summary measures, along...

The last few years have seen a growing commitment worldwide to universal health coverage (UHC). Yet there is a lack of clarity on how to measure progress towards UHC. This paper proposes a 'mashup' index that captures both aspects of UHC: that everyone-irrespective of their ability-to-pay-gets...

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...