# Factors associated with financial risk due to health spending in Argentina

## TL;DR

This study examines how household characteristics in Argentina relate to catastrophic health spending, finding that elderly and disabled members increase financial risk.

## Contribution

The study introduces a generalized ordered logit model to assess catastrophic health expenditure across different thresholds in Argentina.

## Key findings

- Households with elderly or disabled members are more likely to face catastrophic health spending.
- An economically inactive household head increases the likelihood of incurring catastrophic health expenditure.
- The study highlights the importance of considering all household members' attributes to avoid overestimating the impact of elderly members.

## Abstract

This article aims to assess the association between household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) in Argentina during 2017–2018. CHE was estimated as the proportion of household consumption capacity (using both income and total consumption in separate estimations) allocated for Out-of-Pocket (OOP) health expenditure. For assessing the determinants, we estimated a generalized ordered logit model using different intensities of CHE (10%, 15%, 20% and 25%) as the ordinal dependent variable, and socioeconomic, demographic and geographical variables as explanatory factors. We found that having members older than 65 years and with long-term difficulties increased the likelihood of incurring CHE. Additionally, having an economically inactive household head was identified as a factor that increases this probability. However, the research did not yield consistent results regarding the relationship between public and private health insurance and consumption capacity. Our results, along with the robustness checks, suggest that the magnitude of the coefficients for the household head characteristics could be exaggerated in studies that overlook the attributes of other household members. In addition, these results emphasize the significance of accounting for long-term difficulties and indicate that omitting this factor could overestimate the impact of members aged over 65.