{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "world-bank-health-spending",
 "type": "dataset",
 "names": {
  "name": "Current health expenditure per person",
  "aliases": [
   "SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD",
   "health spending per capita"
  ],
  "said": "Everyone calls it health spending per capita. The World Bank calls it current health expenditure, and the word current is doing work."
 },
 "region": [
  "global"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "publisher": "World Bank"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "What a country spends on health in a year, divided by its population, in current US dollars. The World Bank republishes it from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database. It is the series behind this site's first world map, and 193 countries carry a value.",
  "story": "The number is assembled from national health accounts, which countries compile to a shared WHO framework and submit on their own schedule. That is why the most recent year differs by country: some report within eighteen months, some are four years behind. Every value on this site carries its own year for that reason.\n\n*Inference —* the series is also the reason a price comparison needs a second column. A country can be cheap to be operated in because its wages are low, because its state absorbs the capital cost of the hospital, because its currency fell, or because the operation billed is a smaller thing than the one billed at home. Spending per person separates none of those out. It is a scale, not an explanation.",
  "how": "Fetched by tools/harvest_worldbank.py from the World Bank indicator API, no key, most recent non-null year kept per country, the year stored beside the value. Aggregates — the Bank's own regions and income groups — are dropped, because their iso2 codes are not country codes.",
  "notes": "Current US dollars, not adjusted for what a dollar buys locally. A purchasing-power version exists and tells a different story; this site does not carry it yet. Country counts on this page were re-read on 17 September 2026, after the harvest started dropping the World Bank's own aggregates — income groups, regions, the euro area — which arrive on the same endpoint wearing two-letter codes. One of them, XN, is \"Lower middle income\" at the Bank and northern Cyprus on this site's map."
 },
 "dataset": {
  "publisher": "World Bank Open Data, from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database",
  "url": "https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD",
  "api": "https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?format=json",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0",
  "unit": "current US$ per person per year",
  "indicator": "SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD",
  "years": "1960 to the most recent reporting year, which differs by country",
  "countries": 193,
  "updated_by_publisher": "annually, as national health accounts arrive",
  "counts": "Final consumption of health goods and services in a year: government schemes, compulsory insurance, voluntary insurance, and household out-of-pocket payments, divided by mid-year population.",
  "does_not_count": "Capital spending — a new hospital building does not appear. Nor does anything a foreign patient pays for treatment in that country, which is exactly the flow this site is about: a country can run a large export trade in surgery and show nothing for it here.",
  "used_on": [
   "/map/",
   "/numbers/",
   "every country page"
  ]
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "thailand",
   "as": "One of 193 countries carrying a value in this series.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "to": "counting-patients",
   "as": "The same problem one layer up: what a health number counts is rarely what a reader assumes.",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "World Bank indicator page",
   "url": "https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:worldbank-open-data",
  "s:who-gho"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "harvested",
   "source": "s:worldbank-open-data"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "the second paragraph is this project reasoning about what the series can and cannot support"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "blurb": "What a country spends on health in a year, divided by its population, in current US dollars. The World Bank republishes it from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "global",
   "name": "Everywhere",
   "note": "use for a node that belongs to no one country — a standard, a word, a risk"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "thailand",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Thailand",
   "as": "One of 193 countries carrying a value in this series.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "to": "counting-patients",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Counting patients",
   "as": "The same problem one layer up: what a health number counts is rarely what a reader assumes.",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:worldbank-open-data",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "World Bank Open Data — health and tourism indicators",
   "publisher": "The World Bank",
   "url": "https://data.worldbank.org/",
   "license": "CC BY 4.0",
   "license_url": "https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/public-licenses#cc-by",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "fetched by tools/harvest_worldbank.py; every indicator's own code and fetch date sit in data/harvest/worldbank.json"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:who-gho",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Global Health Observatory",
   "publisher": "World Health Organization",
   "url": "https://www.who.int/data/gho",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "harvested",
   "source": "s:worldbank-open-data"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "note": "the second paragraph is this project reasoning about what the series can and cannot support"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "harvested",
   "source": "s:worldbank-open-data"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "indonesia",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Indonesia",
   "as": "The series behind what this country spends on health per person, and behind the outflow.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "jordan",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Jordan",
   "as": "The series behind what this country spends on health per person.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "saudi-arabia",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Saudi Arabia",
   "as": "The series behind what this country spends on health per person.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "sri-lanka",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Sri Lanka",
   "as": "The series that shows this country doing well on the average and says nothing about the gap at the top.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "switzerland",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Switzerland",
   "as": "The series that places its cost base near the top of the world.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "thailand",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Thailand",
   "as": "The series behind what this country spends on health per person.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "cairo",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Cairo",
   "as": "The series behind what this country spends on health per person, and the scale the private sector sits on top of.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "johannesburg",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Johannesburg",
   "as": "The series behind the gap between this country's private sector and its public one.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "knee-replacement",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Total knee replacement",
   "as": "The series behind the map of what each country spends on health per person.",
   "rel": "measured-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "who",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "World Health Organization",
   "as": "The series the World Bank republishes from WHO's health expenditure database.",
   "rel": "measures"
  },
  {
   "from": "out-of-pocket",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Out-of-pocket",
   "as": "The companion series: what a country spends per person, beside how much of it households pay directly.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "natural-earth-countries",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "Natural Earth country outlines",
   "as": "What the outlines are coloured by, joined on the country code.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "who-global-health-observatory",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "WHO Global Health Observatory",
   "as": "The republished form most of this site actually reads, with the country codes attached.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "world-bank-beds",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "Hospital beds per 1,000 people",
   "as": "What the country spends, against what it has built.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "world-bank-doctors",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "Physicians per 1,000 people",
   "as": "The money series beside this one, from the same publisher and with the same year-by-country problem.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "world-bank-out-of-pocket",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "Out-of-pocket share of health spending",
   "as": "The amount this one is a share of.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "world-bank-tourism-arrivals",
   "type": "dataset",
   "name": "International arrivals",
   "as": "The money series beside it, and the one that also cannot see a foreign patient.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "how-this-was-built",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "How this was built",
   "as": "The series behind the first world map, and the exemplar record this schema was written against.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  },
  {
   "from": "what-the-data-cannot-see",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "What the data cannot see",
   "as": "Excludes anything a foreign patient pays, which is the flow this site is about.",
   "rel": "dataset"
  }
 ]
}