An ecological study on the association between universal health service coverage index, health expenditures, and early childhood caries

Table 1 UHC service coverage, total per capita health expenditure and prevalence of ECC in 3–5-year-old children by income-levels

Variables	LICs	LMICs	UMICs	HICs	All	P
Variables	6	20	24	33	83
UHC service coverage index	44.33 (2.34) a	59.70 (10.10) b	71.50 (6.01) c	80.48 (5.50) d	70.27 (12.84)	< 0.0001*
Total health expenditure percentage of GDP	4.46 (1.15) a	4.65 (1.40) a	6.19 (2.18) a	8.48 (3.03) b	6.61 (2.86)	< 0.0001*
Percentage of 3–5-year-old children with ECC	63.12 (20.33) ab	64.77 (18.18) a	65.33 (17.54) a	44.97 (22.87) b	56.94 (22.10)	0.001*

LIC low-income country, LMIC lower middle-income country, UMIC upper middle-income country, HIC high income country
*Statistically significant at P ≤ 0.001, a, b, c, d: different letters denote columns that are statistically significant different from each other in same row. Same letters connote columns that are not statistically significantly different from each other in the same row

ISSN: 1472-6831