Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jul 11;19(1):49.
doi: 10.1186/s12992-023-00947-4.

Future health expenditure in the BRICS countries: a forecasting analysis for 2035

Pragyan Monalisa Sahoo #  1 , Himanshu Sekhar Rout  2 , Mihajlo Jakovljevic #  3   4   5
Affiliations

Future health expenditure in the BRICS countries: a forecasting analysis for 2035

Pragyan Monalisa Sahoo et al. Global Health. .

Abstract

Background: Accelerated globalization especially in the late 1980s has provided opportunities for economic progress in the world of emerging economies. The BRICS nations' economies are distinguishable from other emerging economies due to their rate of expansion and sheer size. As a result of their economic prosperity, health spending in the BRICS countries has been increasing. However, health security is still a distant dream in these countries due to low public health spending, lack of pre-paid health coverage, and heavy out-of-pocket spending. There is a need for changing the health expenditure composition to address the challenge of regressive health spending and ensure equitable access to comprehensive healthcare services.

Objective: Present study examined the health expenditure trend among the BRICS from 2000 to 2019 and made predictions with an emphasis on public, pre-paid, and out-of-pocket expenditures for 2035.

Methods: Health expenditure data for 2000-2019 were taken from the OECD iLibrary database. The exponential smoothing model in R software (ets ()) was used for forecasting.

Results: Except for India and Brazil, all of the BRICS countries show a long-term increase in per capita PPP health expenditure. Only India's health expenditure is expected to decrease as a share of GDP after the completion of the SDG years. China accounts for the steepest rise in per capita expenditure until 2035, while Russia is expected to achieve the highest absolute values.

Conclusion: The BRICS countries have the potential to be important leaders in a variety of social policies such as health. Each BRICS country has set a national pledge to the right to health and is working on health system reforms to achieve universal health coverage (UHC). The estimations of future health expenditures by these emerging market powers should help policymakers decide how to allocate resources to achieve this goal.

Keywords: BRICS; ETS; Emerging markets; Forecasting; Health expenditure; Health spending.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing interests for this work.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
System of health accounts 2011 classification of health expenditure. Source: OECD/Eurostat/WHO [37]
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Change in total health expenditure as a share of GDP and share of health expenditure as a share of total (in %)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Total health expenditure per capita and percentage of GDP for Brazil and Russia
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Total health expenditure per capita and percentage of GDP for India and China
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Total health expenditure per capita and percentage of GDP for South Africa
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Jakovljevic M. BRIC’s growing share of global health spending and their diverging pathways. Front Public Health. 2015;3(135):1–4. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Jakovljevic M, Timofeyev Y, Ekkert N, Fedorova J, Skvirskaya G, Bolevich S, et al. The impact of health expenditures on public health in BRICS nations. J Sport Health Sci. 2019;8(6):516–9. doi: 10.1016/j.jshs.2019.09.002. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wahab A, Kefeli Z. Projecting a long term expenditure growth in Healthcare Service: A literature review. Procedia Econ Financ. 2016;37:152–7. doi: 10.1016/S2212-5671(16)30106-X. - DOI
    1. Harmer A. The BRICS countries: a new force in global health? Bull World Health Organ. 2014;92:394–5. doi: 10.2471/BLT.14.030614. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Micah AE, Su Y, Bachmeier D, Chapin A, Cogswell IE, Crosby SW, et al. Health sector spending and spending on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, and development assistance for health: progress towards sustainable development goal 3. Lancet. 2020;396:693–724. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30608-5. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types