Poverty and private health expenditures in Italian households during the recent crisis

The global financial crisis that began in 2008 had an overall effect on the health behaviours ofItalian households. Aggregate private health expenditures have decreased while the citizenshave increasingly been asked to share health costs. The reduction of households’ healthexpenditure could have serious consequences for health, especially if it concerns the mostvulnerable people. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relation between poverty andhousehold health expenditure, considering regional and social group variations. The dataused stem from the “Family Expenditure Survey” collected by the Italian Statistical Institute(ISTAT) from 1997 to 2013.Results of multivariate analysis controlling for potential socio-demographic confoundersshow that the propensity to spend for poor families is decreased in the last years com-pared to not poor households. Meanwhile, among the households who spend, the averageexpenditure in euro seems to have been more stable over time.This is an alarming signal for the health of the most vulnerable households. These con-ditions could result in a gradual deterioration of health in poor families, which is likely toincrease the burden on health systems in future. Hence, at this moment public interventiondoes not seem able to alleviate this situation.