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Data

Percentage of population covered by health insurance

About this data

Source
ILO (2014) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 10, 2017
Date range
1995–2011
Unit
Percent

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

ILO – Universal health protection: Progress to date and the way forward

Share of population covered by health insurance:

Estimate of health coverage as a percentage of total population. Coverage includes affiliated members of health insurance or estimation of the population having free access to health care services provided by the State. Consult detailed data and sources available from the original tables (http://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourceDownload.action?ressource.ressourceId=37218) and the discussion paper (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_305947.pdf)

Total health care coverage:

This dataset combines observations for OECD countries from the 1960s, with observations for non-OECD countries from the 2000s. If you are interested in complete series please visit the underlying sources.

Estimate of health coverage as a percentage of total population. Coverage includes affiliated members of health insurance or estimation of the population having free access to health care services provided by the State. Consult detailed data and sources available from the original tables (http://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourceDownload.action?ressource.ressourceId=37218) and the discussion paper (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_305947.pdf)

Retrieved on
April 10, 2017
Retrieved from
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_305947.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Scheil-Adlung, Xenia (2014), Universal Health Protection: Progress to Date and the Way Forward, International Labour Organization. OECD.Stat.

Share of population covered by health insurance:

Estimate of health coverage as a percentage of total population. Coverage includes affiliated members of health insurance or estimation of the population having free access to health care services provided by the State. Consult detailed data and sources available from the original tables (http://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourceDownload.action?ressource.ressourceId=37218) and the discussion paper (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_305947.pdf)

Total health care coverage:

This dataset combines observations for OECD countries from the 1960s, with observations for non-OECD countries from the 2000s. If you are interested in complete series please visit the underlying sources.

Estimate of health coverage as a percentage of total population. Coverage includes affiliated members of health insurance or estimation of the population having free access to health care services provided by the State. Consult detailed data and sources available from the original tables (http://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourceDownload.action?ressource.ressourceId=37218) and the discussion paper (https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_305947.pdf)

Retrieved on
April 10, 2017
Retrieved from
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_305947.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Scheil-Adlung, Xenia (2014), Universal Health Protection: Progress to Date and the Way Forward, International Labour Organization. OECD.Stat.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Percentage of population covered by health insurance”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from ILO. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/health-protection-coverage.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

ILO (2014) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

ILO (2014) – processed by Our World in Data. “Percentage of population covered by health insurance” [dataset]. ILO, “Universal health protection: Progress to date and the way forward” [original data]. Retrieved May 14, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/health-protection-coverage.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

Download

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-protection-coverage.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear