Book Description

WHO and the World Bank are co-custodian agencies of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 3.8.2, one of the financial hardship indicators used to track progress towards universal health coverage (UHC)(SDG target 3.8). SDG target 17.18 calls for all countries to increase the availability of disaggregated data by age and other characteristics relevant to national contexts. In response, WHO, as a normative agency, proposed in 2020 to extend the life-course approach from age groups at the individual level to the household level to monitor inequalities in financial hardship by the age structure of the household. Based on data from 47 countries with household survey estimates for 2015–2019, the “Tracking universal health coverage: 2023 global monitoring report” published by WHO and the World Bank had identified sharp inequalities in financial hardship by the age structure of the household, especially between people living in multigenerational, older and only older, and younger households. This brief aims to provide more conceptual details about the methods used to track age-related inequalities in financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending and presents estimates of such inequalities for more countries than were included in the 2023 UHC global monitoring report.