The productive efficiency of the health care sector of China

Based on four years of province-level health care data, this paper analyzes the productive efficiency of China's health care sector in the post reform period. Data envelopment analysis is used to compute efficiency measures, which indicate that there was still room for improvement in the technical efficiency of the health care sector in China between 2002 and 2005. This is particularly the case in the coastal provinces. According to the computed Malmquist index and its decomposition components, China's health care sector suffers from productivity decline, especially for the coastal provinces. Nevertheless, there has been technological improvement across all provinces.