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Total population, 2021: 5,154,000
Life expectancy at birth, 2019: 80.8
Maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births, 2020: 22
Under-five mortality rate per 1,000 live births, 2021: 8
Neonatal mortality rate per 1,000 live births, 2021: 5
New HIV infections per 1,000 uninfected population, 2021: 0.21
Tuberculosis incidence per 100,000 population, 2021: 11
Probability of dying from any of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease between age 30 and exact age 70, 2019: 9.5%
Universal health coverage service coverage index, 2021: 81
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 10% of total household expenditure or income, 2013-2021: 7.4%
Population with household expenditures on health more than 25% of total household expenditure or income, 2013-2021: 1.1%
Domestic general government health expenditure (GGHE-D) as percentage of general government expenditure (GGE), 2020: 25.2%
Density of medical doctors per 10,000 population, 2013-2021: 27.7
Density of nursing and midwifery personnel 2013-2021 per 10,000 population, 2013-2021: 30.6
Density of dentists per 10,000 population, 2013-2021: 10.6
Density of pharmacists per 10,000 population, 2013-2021: 11.7

Source: World health statistics 2023: monitoring health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2023.

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Population, 2021: 5,154,000
Annual Population Growth Rate, 2020-2030 (%): 0.5%
Life Expectancy at Birth, 2021: 77
Share of Urban Population, 2021: 81%
Annual Growth Rate of Urban Population, 2020-2030 (%): 1.1%
Neonatal Mortality Rate, 2021: 5
Infant Mortality Rate, 2021: 6
Under-5 Mortality Rate, 2021: 8
Maternal Mortality Ratio, 2020: 22
Gross Domestic Product Per Capita (Current USD), 2010-2019: $12,244
Share of Household Income, 2010-2019
– Bottom 40%: 13%
– Top 20%: 54%
– Bottom 20%: 4%
Gini Coefficient, 2010-2019: 50
Palma Index of Income Inequality, 2010-2019: 3.1

Note: “Under-5 mortality rate – Probability of dying between birth and exactly 5 years of age, expressed per 1,000 live births.
“Infant mortality rate – Probability of dying between birth and exactly 1 year of age, expressed per 1,000 live births.
“Neonatal mortality rate – Probability of dying during the first 28 days of life, expressed per 1,000 live births.”
“Maternal mortality ratio – Number of deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 live births during the same time period (modelled estimates).”
Gini coefficient – Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.
Palma index of income inequality – Palma index is defined as the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income divided by the poorest 40%’s share.

Source: United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2023: For every child, vaccination, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight, Florence, April 2023.

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Population, Midyear 2022: 5,180,829
Population Density (Number of Persons per Square Kilometer): 101.47
Life Expectancy at Birth, 2022: 77.32
Infant Mortality Rate, 2022 (per 1,000 live births): 6.84
Under-Five Mortality Rate, 2022 (per 1,000 live births): 8.00
Projected Population, Midyear 2030: 5,432,244
Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2022: 10.83%
Projected Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2030: 14.60%
Projected Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2050: 23.57%

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2023). Data Portal, custom data acquired via website. United Nations: New York. Accessed 12 May 2023.

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Population Insurance Coverage For A Core Set Of Healthcare Services (%) (2019):
Public Coverage: 91%; Primary Private Health Coverage: 0%; Total: 91.0%

*”Population coverage for health care is defined here as the share of the population eligible for a core set of health care services – whether through public programmes or primary private health insurance. The set of services is country-specific but usually includes consultations with doctors, tests and examinations, and hospital care. Public coverage includes both national health systems and social health insurance. On national health systems, most of the financing comes from general taxation, whereas in social health insurance systems, financing typically comes from a combination of payroll contributions and taxation. Financing is linked to ability-to-pay. Primary private health insurance refers to insurance coverage for a core set of services, and can be voluntary or mandatory by law (for some or all of the population.”

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

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Annual household out-of-pocket payment, current USD per capita (2019): $206

Source: Global Health Expenditure Database. Health expenditure series. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed June 9, 2022.

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Out-of-Pocket Spending as Share of Final Household Consumption (%) (2019): 2.3%

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

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“Costa Rica’s health care system is widely regarded as a success story. Its single-payer national health service was created in 1941 and has demonstrated considerable institutional stability since then. Costa Ricans have near universal access to a full range of health care services (including the most technologically complex, such as heart and lung transplants) and enjoy effective protection from catastrophic health expenditure. Life expectancy exceeds that in many OECD countries.

“But spending is on a steep upward trajectory, rising by around 7% per year in nominal terms, almost double general inflation, between 2011 and 2015. National health expenditure currently accounts for 9.3% GDP (remarkably, for a middle-income country, above the OECD average). This is mainly driven by strong increases in medical salaries, which have increased by 6% per year over the past ten years, much faster than productivity growth in the sector. Cost-containment mechanisms are poor, with little evidence that increased spending is benefitting patients. Frustrated by waiting times of a year or more for procedures such as children’s surgery, people are increasingly paying out-of-pocket for care in the private sector, creating the risk of two-tier system.”

Source: OECD (2017), OECD Reviews of Health Systems: Costa Rica 2017, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264281653-en.

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“The Ministry of Health is responsible for overall stewardship of the health system and, nominally at least, has ultimate responsibility for its governance. Health care services and health care insurance is largely delegated, however, to the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, CCSS). The CCSS is the main provider of personal health services, while the Ministry of Health (MoH) and specialised institutions linked to it are responsible for providing focused services to inhabitants with nutritional deficiencies and psychoactive substance addiction problems. In the private sector there are five insurance companies, co-operatives (non-profit organisations contracted by the CCSS, the self-management enterprises and the private clinics and hospitals. The Instituto Nacional de Seguros (INS – National insurance agency) operates both within the public as well as in the private sector and is responsible for covering occupational and traffic risks, as well as providing related hospitalisation, rehabilitation and trauma services.

“The right to health care services was originally offered to the working population – and with time has been extended to new beneficiaries affiliated to the contributive and noncontributive regimes of the system. These are categorised according to three distinct modalities of insurance:

“• Directly insured: employees, retired population from any of the state systems, people that individually or collectively are voluntarily insured, independent workers that contribute to the insurance and thee poor population (insured by the state).

“• Indirectly insured: families and people dependent on directly insured that have been granted benefits as family member.

“• Not insured: people with contributive capacity that do not pay social security, poor population lacking knowledge of their rights and undocumented migrants.

“Existence of the “not insured” modality has allowed inhabitants with contributive capacity to choose not to contribute to the social security. Both the Constitution and the CCSS Creation Law, state that that social insurance is universal, solidary and compulsory. There are no formal or legal mechanisms, however, that the CCSS currently uses to assure that all citizens and residents once they turn 18 years old will be enrolled on the system and contribute to it or will stay permanently on the system.

“However, people within this modality have the right to make use of secondary and tertiary medical services in case of emergency. Health care in Costa Rica is indeed a universal right to emergency attention and primary health care that no one can be denied. Moreover, all minors (under 18 years of age) and pregnant women without family beneficiary coverage, the retired population, HIV patients from the non-contributive regime and the people without contributive capacity (identified as such by the authorities) are insured in charge of the State.”

Source: OECD (2017), OECD Reviews of Health Systems: Costa Rica 2017, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264281653-en.

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“In 1994, Costa Rica underwent a major PHC reform (Spigel et al., 2020), creating a system that provides a comprehensive, coordinated, continuous, patient-centred first point of contact for its citizens (Pesec et al., 2017a; Bitton et al., 2018). In 2019, Costa Rica’s life expectancy was second only to Canada in the Western Hemisphere, and the country performs in the top 10% of low- and middle-income countries on effective PHC coverage and primary care–related health outcomes (Pesec et al., 2017b; United Nations Development Programme, 2019). In the 1994 reform, the responsibility for all public sector healthcare delivery (including public health efforts) was consolidated under the Social Security Administration [Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS)]. PHC delivery is organized into seven Health Regions, 106 Health Areas and 1065 primary care clinics, known as Equipos Básicos de Atención Integral de Salud (EBAIS) (Comprehensive Basic Primary Healthcare Teams). Figure 1 describes the organization of PHC. Multidisciplinary EBAIS teams consist of a doctor, a medical assistant, a community health worker [known as Asistente Técnico de Atención Primaria (ATAPs)] and a medical data clerk [known as Registros de Salud Clerk (REDES)]; each team cares for a geographically empanelled population of ∼∼4000 individuals. These teams work collaboratively to deliver multidisciplinary, preventive and curative care to all Costa Ricans.”

Source: Madeline Pesec, Lauren Spigel, José María Molina Granados, Asaf Bitton, Lisa R Hirschhorn, Jorge Arturo Jiménez Brizuela, Michael Pignone, María del Rocío Sáenz, Dan Schwarz, Oscar Villegas del Carpio, Ira B Wilson, Eduardo Zamora Méndez, Hannah L Ratcliffe, Strengthening data collection and use for quality improvement in primary care: the case of Costa Rica, Health Policy and Planning, 2021;, czab043, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czab043

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated November 18, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.