Public Spending on Health Care in Africa: Do the Poor Benefit?

This paper examines the distribution of health services in seven African countries – Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa, and Tanzania. The authors find that public spending on curative health care mostly favors the better-off rather than the poor and observe that the constraints that prevent the poor from taking advantage of these services must be addressed if the public subsidies are to be effective in reaching the poor. Brief summaries in French and Spanish are included.