The conceptual issues of targeting are well understood. Whether, how and how much to target social services or subsidies to the poor depends on balancing the benefits and costs in a given set of circumstances. The benefit of targeting is that it can concentrate expenditures allocated to poverty alleviation or social programs on those who need them most. This saves money and improves programs efficiency. The costs are the administrative cost of identifying potential beneficiaries, possible economic losses due to disincentive effects and any loss of political support for the programs.
Medical ethicist Norman Daniels reported on a project that he and several colleagues have undertaken to assess the fairness of health sector reforms. The project was in two parts. The first was development of a method for assessing fairness in health reforms, which consisted of establishing nine benchmarks or criteria. The second was of the benchmarks to assess health reform programs in four countries: Colombia, Mexico, Pakistan, and Thailand.
This article is one of several related studies based on data from the well-known Matlab study area operated by the International Centre for Research on Diarrheal Diseases, Bangladesh.
Medical ethicist Norman Daniels reported on a project that he and several colleagues have undertaken to assess the fairness of health sector reforms. The project was in two parts. The first was development of a method for assessing fairness in health reforms, which consisted of establishing nine benchmarks or criteria. The second was of the benchmarks to assess health reform programs in four countries: Colombia, Mexico, Pakistan, and Thailand
This paper provides information about the burden of disease among the poor members of society. It is designed to complement the data about society as a whole that have been the principal focus of most burden of disease work to date.
The authors located for the poorest 20% of the world’s population, using countries’ average per capita incomes (adjusted to achieve purchasing power parity). They then calculated the total number of deaths in the countries concerned, using data from standard United Nations and World Bank sources. The final step was to estimate the proportion of total deaths attributable to each cause.
This papers presents and compares two threshold approaches to measuring the fairness of health care payments, one requiring that payments do not exceed a pre-specified proportion of pre-payment scheme, the other that they do not drive households into poverty.
