Extreme poverty in Asia worsened by health care costs: study
Pakistan Times Wire Service

PARIS: The number of Asians living in extreme poverty may be tens of millions higher than thought because estimates fail to factor in health-care costs, a study published in a French daily says.

The internationally accepted threshold of absolute poverty, established by the World Bank, is income of one dollar per head per day -- to be precise, 1.08 dollars a day, a figure adjusted to represent purchasing power in 1993, when the benchmark was set down.

But, say a Dutch-led research team, this formula takes into account food, clothing and shelter but not out-of-pocket health-care costs, which can represent a big chunk of income for the poor.

They reassessed measurements of poverty in 11 low-to-middle income countries; Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

Together, these countries account for 79 percent of the population in Asia, and 48 percent of the world's population.

When the local costs of health care were factored in, an additional 78 million people in these countries -- 2.7 percent of their population -- fell below the one-dollar-a-day threshold.

The burden was highest in Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and China, and lowest in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.●