Economic impacts of health shocks on households in low and middle income countries: a review of the literature

Poor health is a source of impoverishment among households in low -and middle- income countries (LMICs) and a subject of voluminous literature in recent years. This paper reviews recent empirical literature on measuring the economic impacts of health shocks on households. Key inclusion criteria were studies that explored household level economic outcomes (burden of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending, labour supply responses and non-medical consumption) of health shocks and sought to correct for the likely endogeneity of health shocks, in addition to studies that measured catastrophic and impoverishment effects of ill health. The review only considered literature in the English language and excluded studies published before 2000 since these have been included in previous reviews. We identified 105 relevant articles, reports,…