--- title: Total spending in global health author: Issa Rice date: 2017-04-12 created: 2016-08-25 --- # Summary For a nice overview of the overall flow of health aid money, see the work out of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which uses data from numerous sources including [Development Assistance Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_Assistance_Committee) and [Common Reporting Standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard) databases; data from the WHO, World Bank, and Gates Foundation; and national aid data. See [supplement](https://jamanetwork.com/data/Journals/JAMA/934139/JSC150003supp1_prod.pdf) to "Sources and Focus of Health Development Assistance, 1990--2014" and [annex](http://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/policy_report/2016/FGH2015/IHME_fgh2015_methods_annex.pdf) to "Financing Global Health 2015: Development assistance steady on the path to new Global Goals" for the full list. For 2015, this tracks around $40 billion in development assistance for health (DAH). Refer to the reports and papers for commentary and pre-computed visualizations, or to [Viz Hub](https://vizhub.healthdata.org/fgh/) for an interactive web app. For specific project-level information, see the [IATI Registry](https://iatiregistry.org/), which keeps track of submissions that use the IATI format. My impression is that some of the sources used by IHME's work also contain project-level information, but I haven't investigated this. ## Blind spots, interpretive cautions The funding reports from IHME track the time period 1990--present. Funding data from specific foundations tend to begin sometime in the first decade of the 2000s or the 2010s. At this point I don't really know which donors, cause areas, and recipients might be missing; this is the sort of thing that becomes obvious when one tries to do something with the data that involves knowing the data about some org or cause area. As far as I can tell, IHME's analysis does not use data from IATI. I cannot tell whether this is because it obtained the same sort of data from other sources, didn't have time to assess the quality of IATI's data, or somehow didn't like IATI (I'm assuming they have heard of it). IATI data are published in a timely manner as far as I can tell (it depends on the publisher org, so the time lag cannot be stated in a concise way). IHME's reports are published every two years or so, along with their other GBD work. # Notes From [some WHO report](http://apps.who.int/nha/database/DocumentationCentre/GetFile/50534721/en): > The subject of health expenditure is in itself a challenging topic. No exact > measurement exists for the basic health expenditure in all countries. Even in > countries with advanced statistical systems, some modifications are made > periodically to estimated expenditure levels due to improvements in sources > and methods. In spite of national efforts, not all relevant data are provided > in the detail needed so estimations are still required. The GHED contains the > best available estimations/data of the variables to date. From [another WHO report](http://apps.who.int/nha/database/DocumentationCentre/GetFile/51106551/en) (page 2): > In 2011, US$ 6.9 trillion was spent on health. \[By whom? The "Key facts" > section doesn't say\] Page 7 elaborates: > In 2011, the world spent a total of US$ 6.9 trillion on health at exchange > rates or I$ 7.2 trillion (International dollars taking into account the > purchasing power of different national currencies). The geographical > distribution of financial resources for health is uneven. There is a 20/80 > syndrome in which 34 OECD countries make up less than 20% of the world's > population but spend over 80% of the world's resources on health. From the same report (page 3): > **Increasing external support** \ > If all donor countries were to immediately honor their overseas development > assistance pledges, more than three million lives would be saved by 2015. I'm not sure what these pledges are and how much money they add up to, but finding that would yield one estimate of the cost per life saved. Page 6: > Half to two-thirds of total government spending on health is used for > hospital care. Page 9, which indicates that the spending figure from 2011 might be quite a bit off, since health spending seems to change a lot in just a few years: > Trends between 2001--2005 show significant increases in total expenditures on > health in the group of low-income countries. Taken as a group, these > countries spent $11 (in 2005 US\$) per capita health in 2001, a figure that > includes contributions from external sources such as bilateral and > multilateral partners and foundations. This had increased to $15 in 2005, and > $21 in 2011. This represents an increase of 85% over the period. WHO also has its [own expenditures database thing](http://apps.who.int/nha/database/ViewData/Indicators/en). [Financing Global Health 2009: Tracking Development Assistance for Health](http://www.healthdata.org/node/854): > *Financing Global Health 2009* provides the most comprehensive picture > available of the total amount of funding going to global health projects > spanning two decades. It takes into account funding from aid agencies in 22 > developed countries, multilateral institutions, and hundreds of nonprofit > groups and charities. Prior to this report, nearly all private philanthropic > giving for health was unaccounted for, meaning that nearly a third of all > health aid was not tracked. [Dieleman et al.](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2816%2930168-4/abstract) (2016, p2) describe the literature as follows: > **Evidence before this study** \ > Much research has sought to describe the disbursement of development > assistance for health (DAH). Previous research articles and reports by > the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have tracked DAH from > 1990 onward, disaggregating spending by the source of funding, > intermediary channel, recipient country, and health focus area. Other > studies have concentrated on specific health focus areas, such as the > estimates produced by Countdown to 2015, which focused on maternal, > child, and newborn health. In addition to resource tracking, separate, > relatively contentious lines of research have aimed to measure the > effectiveness of DAH, and the practice in which development assistance > displaces government spending. These studies vary in scope and > conclusion, with some focusing on cross-country longitudinal analyses, > and others concentrating on a single country or programme. Finally, > there is a substantial body of research that aims to connect governance > and DAH, and explores how DAH is allocated across recipient countries > and health focus areas. Conclusions from these studies have been quite > mixed. Page 5, § Results: > We used more than 60 data sources. Data were collected from the > Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Creditor > Reporting System (CRS); the OECD's Development Assistance Committee > (DAC); project-level data from the Gates Foundation, the Global Fund, > Gavi, and the World Bank; grant-level data from the Foundation Center; > non-governmental organisation (NGO) data from the US Agency for > International Development (USAID)'s annual Report of Voluntary Agencies; > and a diverse set of audited financial records and annual budgets. The paper also includes numerous interesting figures. ["Government health expenditure as a source"](http://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/policy_report/2014/FGH2013/IHME_FGH2013_Chapter5.pdf): In addition to DAH, IHME also tracks GHE-S (government health expenditure as a source) aka the amount that low and middle income countries spend on health. But it's not clear to me what exactly is included. For instance, if one LMIC spends on a health program in a different LMIC, does that count? If an LMIC moves up from middle income to upper income, what happens? Note that the above chapter also splits DAH into DAH-G and DAH-NG depending on the *target* of the aid; DAH-G means DAH given to governments and DAH-NG means DAH given to non-governmental entities. More IHME links: - ["Financing Global Health 2015: Development assistance steady on the path to new Global Goals"](http://www.healthdata.org/policy-report/financing-global-health-2015-development-assistance-steady-path-new-global-goals). This one comes with several PDFs and a bunch of spreadsheets. There is some overlap in the authors (with [*The Lancet* paper](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2816%2930168-4/abstract)) and the publication date is similar. However I cannot tell what precise relationship the two works have. - [Financing Global Health 2015 Brief](http://www.healthdata.org/infographic/financing-global-health-2015-brief) - [Growth in maternal and child health funding outpaces spending on HIV, TB, and malaria](http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/growth-maternal-and-child-health-funding-outpaces-spending-hiv-tb-and-malaria) - [Viz Hub](https://vizhub.healthdata.org/fgh/), which has a flow diagram that you can interact with (e.g. filter only for malaria funding) Some quotes from ["The Money Trail: Ranking Donor Transparency in Foreign Aid"](https://pedl.byu.edu/documents/The%20Money%20Trail.pdf) by Ghosh and Kharas. Note that the version I have access to lacks figures and tables (there are placeholders marking their locations, but not the figures and tables themselves). Page 17: > Also, variables like disbursements cannot be accurately matched with > commitments, so it is hard to know if projects are actually > implemented. Page 21: > The data for the Transparency Index comes from two main sources: > > - The Development Assistance Committee's Credit or Reporting System's > (CRS) database, with details on each aid activity available from > 1973 onwards. > - AidData -- AidData is a data source for aid activities launched in > March 2010 (Tierney *et al.*, 2011). > AidData aims to capture the universe of foreign aid at the project level. > It is currently the most comprehensive source of ODA project information. Page 26: > Donors who are members of the IATI score higher on other dimensions of > transparency as well. Indeed, 13 of the top 15 most transparent donors > are also members of the IATI. We find that being a member of IATI is a > powerful predictor of the donor being more transparent across most of > the other dimensions. "IATI totals for donors tend to be much smaller than apparently-equivalent figures reported through OECD's system. This is largely because many donors are not reporting all of their activities in the IATI system, or not reporting them fully." See also . [AidData](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AidData), used in "The Money Trail" paper (quoted on this page), also seems interesting. There are precursors called [Project-Level Aid Database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-Level_Aid_Database) and Accessible Information on Development Activities (no Wikipedia page). [de Maele, Evans, and Tan-Torres (2013)][dah_story] provides a comparison of several health spending data sources. It includes graphs and a [comparison table](http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/91/7/BLT-12-115410-table-T3.html). [Chapter 13](http://dcp-3.org/sites/default/files/dcp2/DCP13.pdf) of DCP2 is on DAH. For the United States specifically, IHME is also doing the [Disease Expenditure project (DEX)](http://www.healthdata.org/dex/project-strategy) which apparently it plans on also expanding to the rest of the world. There is [another report](http://wvi.org/sites/default/files/Development%20Assistance%20for%20Health%202013.pdf) that tallies up DAH. I think the numbers are a little smaller here compared to the reports from IHME. Other sources to look at for funding info: - [IATI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Aid_Transparency_Initiative) tracks some amount of international aid in a standard format. According to their [2015 annual report](http://www.aidtransparency.net/annualreport2015/#data): > US$78 billion has been reported to IATI this year (2015 disbursements and > expenditure up to 30 October 2015) Unfortunately, their reporting does not provide funding grouped by DAC sectors (or similar), so it's not easy to separate out "development aid" from "health aid". The 2015 data from the [full report](http://www.aidtransparency.net/annualreport2015/downloads/IATI_Annual_Report_2015.pdf) shows that only 53% of publishers report DAC sectors (see figure 12). It's unclear to me what *percentage* of reported funding has DAC sectors attached. It would be a lot of work to try to separate this out oneself. IATI also has but their aggregation is for activities, publishers, file size, etc. -- i.e. all the things except total funding. IATI also has the [D-Portal](http://d-portal.org/ctrack.html?tongue=eng#view=publishers) (Development Portal) but it doesn't show totals. - A [page on University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's website](http://guides.lib.unc.edu/global_health_data) links out to several resources. - Aidflows: [website](http://www.aidflows.org/), [on World Bank website](http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/aidflows) - [*The Guardian*'s student guide][student_guide] links out to other sources. It looks like *The Guardian* used to maintain their own [data store](https://web.archive.org/web/20110727113737/http://www.guardian.co.uk/data/global-development-data/search) with an API, but this doesn't seem to be live anymore. - [World Bank](http://data.worldbank.org/), [WDI page](http://data.worldbank.org/products/wdi), [example: World Development Indicators: Health systems](http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/2.15) - [UN](http://data.un.org/) - [Gapminder](http://www.gapminder.org/data/) - Wikipedia's [list of countries by total health expenditure per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita) uses both OECD stats as well as WHO's GHED (but oddly, via the World Bank) - [List of development aid country donors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors) - [List of countries by Official Development Assistance received](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Official_Development_Assistance_received) - lol: [Commitment to Development Index § History of the CDI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commitment_to_Development_Index#History_of_the_CDI): "David Roodman, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, is the chief architect of the Index" - The Gates Foundation also has a [grants database](http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database) that's a little lacking in some ways, but probably good enough to try to use - From their [fact sheet](http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Information/Foundation-Factsheet): > Total grant payments since inception (through Q4 2015): $36.7 billion - Some interesting things you can do with the grants database. First, [narrow down to malaria](http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/issue=Malaria), then check "issue" again to see the overlap with other issues: > Malaria (350) \ > Discovery and Translational Sciences (14) \ > Vaccine Delivery (8) \ > Vaccine Development (7) \ > Pneumonia (5) \ > Enteric Diseases and Diarrhea (4) \ > Integrated Development (4) \ > Neglected and Infectious Diseases (3) \ > Integrated Delivery (3) \ > Neglected Tropical Diseases (3) \ > Family Health: Family Planning (2) \ > Tuberculosis (2) \ > Global Policy & Advocacy (1) \ > Communications (1) \ > HIV (1) \ > Polio (1) \ > Strategic Partnerships (1) Or malaria grants by year (that I've sorted by year): > 2016 (13) \ > 2015 (38) \ > 2014 (31) \ > 2013 (22) \ > 2012 (29) \ > 2011 (34) \ > 2010 (31) \ > 2009 and earlier (152) - Individual annual reports put out by various orgs (which ones?) - Private donations in the US: [Charity Navigator](http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/cpid/42) and [NPT](https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-giving-statistics/) give same numbers for 2015, namely $373 billion (but not all of this is health). # See also - [Global public health notes](global-public-health-notes) [dah_story]: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/91/7/12-115410/en/ "“Development assistance for health in Africa: are we telling the right story?”. World Health Organization. 2013. Retrieved April 18, 2017." [student_guide]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/sep/21/students-resources-guide-development-data "“Student guide to global development data on the web”. The Guardian. September 21, 2011. Retrieved April 14, 2017."