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Data

Public health expenditure as a share of GDP

Historical data – Lindert, OECD
See all data and research on:
Healthcare Spending

What you should know about this indicator

This indicator combines three different datasets: Lindert (1994), OECD (1993), and the OECD Health Expenditure and Financing Database. We combine the two OECD datasets by using the implicit growth rate from the older series, so we can extend the series back to 1960. We also use the data from Lindert (1994) to extend the series to 1880.

Public health expenditure as a share of GDP
Historical data – Lindert, OECD
Public health expenditure divided by gross domestic product, expressed as a percentage.
Source
OECD (2025); OECD (1993); Lindert (1994) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 10, 2025
Next expected update
July 2026
Date range
1880–2024
Unit
% of GDP

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Global Health by Our World in Data

Global Health

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser
A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Financing Healthcare by Our World in Data

Healthcare Spending

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Pablo Arriagada, and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

OECD – OECD Health Expenditure and Financing Database

A System of Health Accounts 2011 provides an updated and systematic description of the financial flows related to the consumption of healthcare goods and services. As demands for information increase and more countries implement and institutionalise health accounts according to the system, the data produced are expected to be more comparable, more detailed and more policy relevant.

It builds on the original OECD Manual, published in 2000 to create a single global framework for producing health expenditure accounts that can help track resource flows from sources to uses.

It is the result of a collaborative effort between the OECD, WHO and the European Commission, and sets out in more detail the boundaries, the definitions and the concepts – responding to healthcare systems around the globe – from the simplest to the more complicated. The accounting framework is organised around a tri-axial system for the recording of healthcare expenditure, namely classifications of the functions of healthcare (ICHA-HC), healthcare provision (ICHA-HP), and financing schemes (ICHA-HF).

Retrieved on
December 11, 2025
Retrieved from
https://data-explorer.oecd.org/
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.
OECD (2025), Health Expenditure and Financing Database, https://data-explorer.oecd.org/

A System of Health Accounts 2011 provides an updated and systematic description of the financial flows related to the consumption of healthcare goods and services. As demands for information increase and more countries implement and institutionalise health accounts according to the system, the data produced are expected to be more comparable, more detailed and more policy relevant.

It builds on the original OECD Manual, published in 2000 to create a single global framework for producing health expenditure accounts that can help track resource flows from sources to uses.

It is the result of a collaborative effort between the OECD, WHO and the European Commission, and sets out in more detail the boundaries, the definitions and the concepts – responding to healthcare systems around the globe – from the simplest to the more complicated. The accounting framework is organised around a tri-axial system for the recording of healthcare expenditure, namely classifications of the functions of healthcare (ICHA-HC), healthcare provision (ICHA-HP), and financing schemes (ICHA-HF).

Retrieved on
December 11, 2025
Retrieved from
https://data-explorer.oecd.org/
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.
OECD (2025), Health Expenditure and Financing Database, https://data-explorer.oecd.org/

OECD – OECD Health Systems

Data on health systems published by the OECD in 1993.

Retrieved on
March 4, 2025
Retrieved from
https://search.worldcat.org/title/868237125
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.
Poullier, J. P. (1993). OECD Health Systems (No. 3). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Data on health systems published by the OECD in 1993.

Retrieved on
March 4, 2025
Retrieved from
https://search.worldcat.org/title/868237125
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.
Poullier, J. P. (1993). OECD Health Systems (No. 3). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Lindert – The rise of social spending (1880-1930)

A closer look at the dawn of social spending before 1930 reinterprets the timing, sources, and effects of its rise. New data and tests suggest that income growth played less of a role in shaping the rise of social transfers than did democracy, demography, and religion. Even in that early half-century the aging of the adult population was a leading force raising government transfers, especially pensions, and cutting support for schooling.

Retrieved on
March 4, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498384710011
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.
Lindert, P. H. (1994). The Rise of Social Spending, 1880-1930. Table 1D. Explorations in Economic History, 31(1), 1-37. https://doi.org/10.1006/exeh.1994.1001

A closer look at the dawn of social spending before 1930 reinterprets the timing, sources, and effects of its rise. New data and tests suggest that income growth played less of a role in shaping the rise of social transfers than did democracy, demography, and religion. Even in that early half-century the aging of the adult population was a leading force raising government transfers, especially pensions, and cutting support for schooling.

Retrieved on
March 4, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498384710011
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.
Lindert, P. H. (1994). The Rise of Social Spending, 1880-1930. Table 1D. Explorations in Economic History, 31(1), 1-37. https://doi.org/10.1006/exeh.1994.1001

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
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We extrapolated the data available from the OECD Health Expenditure and Financing Database (Government/compulsory schemes) using the earliest available observation from this dataset and applying the growth rates implied by the OECD (1993) data to obtain a series starting in 1960. These steps are necessary because the data in these years is not exactly the same for the two datasets due to changes in definitions and measurement, though the trends are consistent for common years (1970-1991).

We don't transform the data from Lindert (1994), the values are the same as in the original source.

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: Public health expenditure as a share of GDP”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Pablo Arriagada, and Max Roser (2017) - “Healthcare Spending”. Data adapted from OECD, Lindert. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/public-health-expenditure-share-gdp.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 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:

OECD (2025); OECD (1993); Lindert (1994) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2025); OECD (1993); Lindert (1994) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Public health expenditure as a share of GDP – Lindert, OECD – Historical data” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Health Expenditure and Financing Database”; OECD, “OECD Health Systems”; Lindert, “The rise of social spending (1880-1930)” [original data]. Retrieved March 31, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/public-health-expenditure-share-gdp.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Data URL (CSV format)
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Metadata URL (JSON format)
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Code examples

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

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-health-expenditure-share-gdp.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/public-health-expenditure-share-gdp.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/public-health-expenditure-share-gdp.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

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

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