Press release No. 153 of 7 April 2022
- Health expenditure rose 6.5% to new record high compared with pre-Covid year 2019
- Estimate for 2021 suggests further rise by 5.7% to 465.7 billion euros in 2021 - expenditure increase mostly due to coronavirus testing and vaccination campaign
WIESBADEN – Health expenditure in Germany rose to a new record high of 440.6 billion euros in the Covid-year of 2020. That was 5,298 euros per inhabitant. Health expenditure per capita exceeded 5,000 euros for the first time since calculations started in 1992. To mark World Health Day on 7 April 2022, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that health expenditure in 2020 was 26.8 billion euros or 6.5% higher than in 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, health expenditure accounted for 13.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP). This proportion was by 1.2 percentage points higher than in 2019. A comparable increase was recorded only after the financial market crisis of 2009 when the proportion had risen by 1.0 percentage points on the preceding year. Both increases were accompanied by a decline in nominal GDP (2009: -4.0%; 2020: -3.0%).
Basic data and long time series are available in tables "23611 Health expenditure" in the GENESIS-Online database.
