Poverty and private health expenditures in Italian households during the recent crisis

Publication date: Available online 6 January 2017
Source:Health Policy
Author(s): Simone Sarti, Marco Terraneo, Mara Tognetti Bordogna
The global financial crisis that began in 2008 had an overall effect on the health behaviours of Italian households. Aggregate private health expenditures have decreased while the citizens have increasingly been asked to share health costs. The reduction of households’ health expenditure could have serious consequences for health, especially if it concerns the most vulnerable people. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relation between poverty and household health expenditure, considering regional and social group variations. The data used stem from the “Family Expenditure Survey” collected by the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT) from 1997 to 2013.Results of multivariate analysis controlling for potential socio-demographic confounders show that poor households have significantly cut down on health spending compared to not poor households. In particular, the propensity to spend for poor families is decreased in the last years whereas the expenditure in euro seems to have been more stable over time.This is an alarming signal for the health of the most vulnerable households. These conditions could result in a gradual deterioration of health in poor families, which is likely to increase the burden on health systems in future. Hence, at this moment public intervention does not seem able to alleviate this situation.



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