Health care payments in the asia pacific: validation of five survey measures of economic burden

Table 3 Household economic burden due to health care payments in past 12 months ^a

	Country
Measure of economic burden	China	Malaysia	Philippines	Vietnam
	(n=3993)	(n=6095)	(n=10,074)	(n=4169)
Any health expenditure, (%)
Household paid for health care	53.6	56.0	58.5	56.3
Health expenditure amount, median by wealth quintile ($)^b
Q1 (fewest assets)	91	0	0	66
Q2	61	0	62	77
Q3	91	37	75	51
Q4	121	80	162	83
Q5 (most assets)	303	292	373	124
Catastrophic health expenditure, (%)^c
Household health expenditure/nonsubsistence expenditure ≥ 40%	16.8	4.6	18.6	13.4
Indebtedness, (%)
Household borrowed money or sold assets to pay for health care	17.0	10.6	30.7	19.0
Impoverishment, (%)^c,d
Household newly classified as poor after paying for health care	5.7	2.4	9.0	7.7

^aAll estimates are weighted to adjust for complex survey design.
^bExpenditures expressed in 2002/03 International Dollars.
^cVariable constructed using WHO methodology (Xu, 2005).
^dDenominator for impoverishment variable includes households not classified as poor prior to paying for health care.

ISSN: 1475-9276