Study On Equity And Use Efficiency Of Health Resources Allocation In China

This paper takes research on health resources in Mainland China in two aspects, equity and efficiency. Regarding equity, the number of hospitals and health centers, number of beds of hospitals and health centers, and number of doctors are selected as the indicators of health resources. Gini Coefficient is employed to evaluate the equity of health resources’ allocation in Mainland China, which gets to a conclusion that the gap of doctor’s number is quite large. Theil index is used to decompose the health resources’ total disparity into three parts, inter-regional (eastern, central, and western China), inter-provincial within each region, and inner-provincial disparity. Both theoretical principle and practical calculation indicate that Theil-L index is more accurate than Theil-T index in reflecting health resources disparity in China. According to Theil-L index, inner-provincial disparity is the most significant contributor, followed by inter-provincial, and finally inter-regional.In aspect of efficiency, this paper selected perinatal mortality and maternal mortality rate as the dependent variables, and the natural logarithm of fiscal expenditure on health per capita as independent variable. Econometric panel data regression method is used to analyze the efficiency of fiscal expenditure on health. The individual fixed effect regression result shows that the less developed provinces in Midwest China perform significantly better than those in the eastern region. This will greatly help enhancing the efficiency of fiscal expenditure on health. By removing the health expenditure from Midwest to East China, from the relatively lower efficiency areas to the higher areas, we will achieve Pareto improvement on the allocation of fiscal expenditure on health.