Demographic Change and Catastrophic Health Expenditure in India

This paper focuses on the magnitude and changes in out-of-pocket (OOP) health care expenditure taking into account demographic transition, through which India has been going, using National Sample Survey data. With the very high levels of OOP expenditure, it is observed that OOP expenditure has further increased recently. And the resultant increase has been more severe among people those are from rural area and belong to the poorer section of economic strata. This paper concludes that the increase of OOP expenditure is the outcome of both new economic policies adopted in the health sector as measures of reform and the age structure change taken place over the periods.