The Palestinian Economy. Theoretical and Practical Challenges

Proceedings “The Palestinian Economy: Theoretical and Practical Challenges” 373
Overall, the extent to which the distribution of need by income drives use-inequality
differs by the levels of care and between the two regions. While the actual distributions of
all levels of care utilisation (C y ) are barely, if ever, distributed to match the pro-poor
distributions of need, some diverse trends emerge: in the two regions, the actual pro-poor
distribution of primary-care appears to be much “less pro-poor” than that expected on the
basis of needs [C y = –0.0527 and –0.0415 vs. I N = –0.0925 and –0.0772 for the WB and
GS, respectively], whereas the opposite is true for all other cases: the actual pro-rich
distributions of both secondary-care (outpatient and inpatient services) and tertiary-care
appear to be a lot “more pro-rich” compared to what would be required on the basis of
needs (e.g., for inpatient-care, C y = 0.0617 and 0.0313 vs. I N = –0.0377 and –0.0171, and
for tertiary-care, C y = 0.1311 and 0.1204 vs. I N = –0.0815 and –0.0741 for the WB and
GS, respectively). This clearly suggests that if the utilisation of each level of health care
were driven by need factors alone, pro-poor inequalities would have been merged. This
also suggests that the overall measured inequality in the utilisation of each level of care
(I y ) is about 50 % lower than it would have been, if need had been distributed equally by
income – i.e., if I N was equal to zero.