Health tourism on the rise? Evidence from the balance of payments statistics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Abstract

The study assesses the presence and magnitude of global trends in health tourism using health-related travel (HRT) spending reported in the International Monetary Fund's Balance of Payments Statistics database. Linear regression and quantile regression are applied to estimate secular trends of the import and export of HRT based on a sample of countries from 2003 to 2009. The results show that from 2003 to 2009 the import and export of health tourism rose among countries with a high volume of such activities (accounting for the upper 40 % of the countries), but not among those with a low volume. The uneven growth in health tourism has generated greater contrast between countries with high and low volumes of health tourism activities. However, the growth in the total import of health tourism did not outpace the population growth, implying that in general the population's tendency to engage in health tourism remained static. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Publication Title

European Journal of Health Economics

Volume

15

Issue

7

First Page

759

Last Page

766

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1007/s10198-013-0521-0

PubMed ID

23872786

ISSN

16187598

E-ISSN

16187601

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