Health financing

Our health financing work examines health spending from governments, individuals, and other channels to inform policymakers about where resources for health are coming from and where they are going. 

78% of global spending on health care is in high-income countries, despite containing only 16% of the world’s population.
62% of the total global health spending came from governments, but this amount varies dramatically by income group and across countries.
$84 billion was provided as development assistance for health in low-income countries in 2021, reaching an all-time high spurred by the pandemic.
$8 per person on average was spent on health by governments in low-income countries in 2023, despite basic health care costing between $60 and $86 per person.

Interactive data visuals

Interactive Data Visual

Financing Global Health

Explore patterns of global health financing flows from 1990 to 2050.

Datasets in our catalog

Visit the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) to download our estimates of health spending for most of the world’s countries over the last two decades, and forecasts of future spending through 2050.

Report

Financing Global Health 2023

The Future of Health Financing in the Post-Pandemic Era

Publications

Infographics

Infographic

FGH 2023: Malaria

Development assistance for malaria amounted to $3.3 billion in 2023.

Infographic

FGH 2023: HIV/AIDS

Funding for HIV/AIDS reached an all-time high of $14.1 billion in 2023.

Videos

Video

United States Health Spending by Race & Ethnicity (2021)

Dr. Joseph L. Dieleman describes main points and health policy recommendations while reviewing key research figure from the study “US Health Care Spending by Race and Ethnicity, 2002-2016," published August 17, 2021 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Video

Tutorials: Financing Global Health

Learn how to explore trends in health spending worldwide with our 2019 Financing Global Health visualization tool.

Related

Health topic

COVID-19