title: Fairness of Financial Contribution in Iranian Health System: Trend Analysis of National Household Income and Expenditure, 2003-2010.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social systems are dealing with the challenge of achieving fairness in the distribution of financial burden and protecting the risk of financial loss. The purpose of this paper is to present a trend analysis for the indicators related to fairness in healthcare's financial burden in rural and urban population of Iran during the eight years period of 2003 to 2010.
  
  
  METHODS
  We used the information gathered by statistical center of Iran through sampling processes for the household income and expenditures. The indicators of fairness in financial contribution of healthcare were calculated based on the WHO recommended methodology. The indices trend analysis of eight-year period for the rural, urban areas and the country level were computed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This study shows that in Iran the fairness of financial contribution index during the eight-year period has been decreased from 0.841 in 2003 to above 0.827 in 2010 and The percentage of people with catastrophic health expenditures has been increased from 2.3% to above 3.1%. The ratio of total treatment costs to the household overall capacity to pay has been increased from 0.055 to 0.068 and from 0.072 to 0.0818 in urban and rural areas respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There is a decline in fairness of financial contribution index during the study period. While, a trend stability of the proportion of households who suffered catastrophic health expenditures was found.
authors.forename: Amir Abbas
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Fazaeli
authors.affiliation: Departments of Health Economics, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran. h.seyedin@iums.ac.ir.
authors.forename: Hesam
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Seyedin
authors.forename: Abbas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vosoogh Moghaddam
authors.forename: Alireza
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Delavari
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Salimzadeh
authors.forename: Hasan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Varmazyar
authors.forename: Ali Akbar
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Fazaeli
mesh_terms: D017281:Cost of Illness; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D007492:Iran; D012424:Rural Population; D012935:Social Justice / Q000191:economics*; D014505:Urban Population