Macroeconomic Constraints to Health Financing: A Guide for the Perplexed

Overview

The link between aid and health spending, and the  role that concerns about macroeconomic stability may  play  here, is an area of much confusion, for  several reasons. First, against the backdrop of the MDG agenda  and an anticipated scaling-up of  external aid, a number  of studies addressed macroeconomic constraints to scaling-up. However, translating the lessons from  this  macroeconomic literature into a public health context  is not  straightforward. Second, some  analyses cover only a short-term  horizon, and  focus on the extent to which  changes  in aid flows translate into contemporaneous higher government  spending.

This report is part of a series, The World Health Report 2010 Background Papers, which were written to inform the process of developing the key messages of the World Health Report 2010: Health systems financing: The path to universal coverage.