Inequality in health and food expenditure, study of Iranian urban and rural households

Background and Inequality in health is a challenging issue in developed and developing countries. In modern health care system، the justiceand attainment to it in all aspectsof health is a principal affair. The inequality in health care and food expenditure is one of the influential factors on household’s health status. This articleexamined the distribution of rural and urban health and food expenditure by using Gini coefficient from1998 to 2009. Methods and Material: All data has been collected from Iranian Households Income- Expenditure Report which published by Iranian Statistics Center annually، thenwereanalyzed by DASP package 2 in STATA10 environment. The Gini coefficient calculated 0. 13 and 0. 28 for rural food expenditure and 0. 13 and 0. 22 for rural health expenditure in 1998 and 2009 respectively. Also these calculations were 0. 11 and 0. 21 for urban food expenditure and 0. 18 And 0. 14 for urban health expenditure in 1998 and 2009 respectively. All calculations were based on constant price. The distribution of health and food expenditure wasfavorable relativelyfor both rural and urban households.