Community‐based health insurance in Lao People's Democratic Republic targets the informal workforce. Estimates of the program's impact on utilization and out‐of‐pocket expenditures (OOPs) were obtained using a case‐comparison study of 3000 households (14 804 individuals) in urban and...

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...

In recent years, a large body of empirical work has focused on measuring and explaining socio-economic inequalities in health outcomes and health service use. In any effort to address these questions, analysts must confront the issue of how to measure socioeconomic status. In developing...