ABSTRACT
Measuring equity in health care financing and delivery receives a lot of attention in applied health economics. This chapter focuses on equity in health care delivery. Discussions on how to define equity in health care make reference (implicitly and explicitly) to different philosophical perspectives on equity including Rawls’ theory of social justice, Sen’s theory on equality in capabilities and utilitarianism. Horizontal equity in access to health care can be examined across population groups categorised in various ways including economic status, geographic location, social status, demographics etc. In the conventional approach to measuring horizontal equity in health care utilisation, the concentration index is used to summarise the covariance between health care use of an individual and her fractional rank in the socioeconomic distribution. The health care resource allocation literature is concerned with allocating resources across a health system in line with health care needs (i.e. vertical equity). This is a useful literature for identifying common proxy measures of health care need.
