This paper summarizes the results of three individual research projects (Asfaw, 2005; Lamiraud et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2005) measuring the impact of membership in a health insurance scheme in three African countries, namely Kenya, Senegal and South Africa. It is structured as follows. The first section...

One of the major challenges for health systems is to ensure that everybody has access to needed care without facing catastrophic payments or impoverishment. Argentina is middle income country that has experienced remarkable transformations in income distribution and inequality in the last...

The effect of a social health insurance on health services utilization and on the total potential incidence of catastrophic health expenditure is explored in this paper. Most previous measures of the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure are quite constrained since they do not take into...

A simple econometric analysis is undertaken concerning the impact of the degree of risk sharing in countries' health financing organization on the goals of the health system, as defined in the World Health Report 2000, i.e., the level of health and its distribution across the population, the...

A large number of governments in all regions of the world have recognised the need for paid sick leave although the benefi t schedules vary widely. International data show that the incidence of paid sick leave is closely associated with overall economic developments. What are the patterns of...