The economic costs of limited health literacy in China: evidence from China’s National Health Literacy Surveillance data

Table 4 Estimates of the aggregate out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditure that changes with the level of health literacy

	Adult Population (million)	Proportion of people with adequate health literacy
		22%	30%	40%	50%	60%	70%
		Total OOP Health Expenditure (billion CNY)
Ningbo	7.47	15.28	15.18	15.05	14.92	14.78	14.65
Zhejiang	38.20	78.17	77.63	76.96	76.28	75.61	74.93
China	896.40	1834.40	1821.73	1805.90	1790.07	1774.25	1758.42

Notes: (1) The adult population (aged 16+) for Ningbo, Zhejiang, and China is 7.47 million, 38.20 million, and 896.40 million, respectively, end of the 2019 year, which we use to construct the aggregate OOP health expenditure. (2) The total OOP health expenditure for a population is computed by using 2085.25 × POP₀ + 1908.67 × POP₁, where POP₀ refers to the number of people with inadequate health literacy, POP₁ refers to the number of people with adequate health literacy. For example, if the level of health literacy is 30% among the adult population in Ningbo, other things being equal, the number of people with adequate health literacy would be 2.24 million (7.47 million × 30%) and the number of people with inadequate health literacy would be 5.23 million (7.47 million × 70%), which we use for the values of POP₀ and POP₁. The total OOP health spending for the adult population at a level of health literacy of 30%, thus, would be 15.18 billion CNY in Ningbo

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