Geography of Economic Disparities and Global Health Inequality

Abstract

The Millennium Development Goals have documented a sharp rise in health inequalities over the past decades. With the advent of the Sustainable Development Agenda health is positioned at the core with health equity used as measure of governments’ success. This highlighted health expenditures as major concern in global health policy debates and raised the question whether countries do invest fair and sufficient money into the health of their people. This chapter focuses on the global economy from the perspective of health expenditures and aims to respond to this question by demonstrating global disparities in health expenditure and their potential relation to health inequalities. The chapter consists of four parts: first, the disparities in global expenditure on health as percent from gross domestic product, as well as absolute amount per capita, including the magnitude of global inequalities in health expenditure per capita; second, the global inequalities in health that can be attributed to the disparities in health expenditure; third, the discourse from just looking at health inequalities to drawing the attention to health inequities; and fourth, a proposal of three scenarios to address the shortage in health expenditure to ensure better lives for all.