This paper outlines a framework for comparing empirically overall health inequality and socioeconomic health inequality. The framework, which is developed for both individual-level data and grouped data, is illustrated using data on malnutrition amongst Vietnamese children and on health utility...

The health systems of Japan and the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan), and the recent reforms to them, provide many potentially valuable lessons to East Asia's developing countries. All five systems have managed to keep a check on health spending despite their different...

This note explores the implications for measuring socioeconomic inequality in health of choosing one measure of SES rather than another. Three points emerge. First, whilst similar rankings in the two the SES measures will result in similar inequalities, this is a sufficient condition not a...

ABSTRACT Using primary data from Laos, we compare a broad range of different types of shocks in terms of their incidence, distribution between the poor and the better off, idiosyncrasy, costs, coping responses, and self‐reported impacts on well‐being. Health shocks are more common than most...

This paper provides a survey of the recent empirical research on China's ‘old’ health system (i.e. prior to the spate of reforms beginning in 2003). It argues that this research has enhanced our understanding of the system prior to 2003, in some cases reinforcing conclusions (e.g. the...

We report the results of a review of the Chinese- and English-language literatures on service delivery in China, asking how well China's health-care providers perform and what determines their performance. Although data and methodological limitations suggest caution in drawing conclusions, a...

In many countries health services and|or health insurance are delivered but also partly financed by subnational entities that vary in their fiscal or financial capacity, e.g. local governments and social health insurance schemes. The central government typically mandates a specific (or at least...