International Monetary Fund Programs and Health Spending

Support More Work Like This.

Your contribution makes it possible for the Center’s researchers to devise practical, evidence-based solutions for today’s most pressing development challenges.

This work has now concluded.

Health spending is highly sensitive to overall fiscal policies. As low- and middle-income countries try to optimize health service provision using their own resources and also foreign aid, macroeconomic policies agreed between their governments and the IMF could have the effect of restraining health spending. In this work from 2007, CGD examined the interaction between IMF-supported macroeconomic policies and government health spending in Mozambique, Rwanda, and Zambia, and made suggestions for the IMF, developing country governments, the international community, and civil society.