Denmark Current Health Expenditure per Capita (EUR)

Denmark's current health expenditure per capita reached 6,298.2 EUR per inhabitant in 2024, up 4.1% from 6,049.0 EUR in 2023 and enough to set a new high for the series — narrowly above the previous peak of 6,281.2 EUR recorded in 2021. The 2024 reading caps a three-year round trip: a pandemic-era surge pushed spending up 9.8% in 2021, two years of decline followed as that elevated spending unwound, and 2024 finally moved past the 2021 high.

This figure covers current health expenditure — total operating health spending across all financing schemes (government, statutory and private insurance, and out-of-pocket payments combined), excluding capital investment such as new hospitals or equipment. It is expressed in euros, not purchasing-power-adjusted PPS; Eurostat publishes a separate PPS version of this same indicator, which is the more appropriate basis for comparing Denmark's spending level against countries with different price levels. The euro figure here is best used to track Denmark's own trajectory over time.

The series tracks Eurostat's harmonised health accounts data for Denmark. Key facts for anyone building on this number:

• Unit: Euros (EUR) per inhabitant
• Definition: Current health expenditure — treatment, medicines, prevention and administration, excluding capital investment — summed across all financing schemes
• Coverage: Denmark, 2010–2024, 15 annual observations
• Source series: Eurostat HLTH_SHA11_HF
• Publisher: Eurostat
• Frequency: Annual

Denmark's per-capita spending grew steadily through most of the 2010s, adding roughly 2% a year on average — a pace consistent with an already-mature, high-income health system rather than one catching up from a low base. That changed in 2020 and 2021, when successive increases of 5.9% and 9.8% pushed spending well above trend. What followed is the more analytically interesting part of the series: expenditure fell in both 2022 (-1.4%) and 2023 (-2.3%), a two-year pullback that gave back a meaningful share of the pandemic-era increase before the 2024 rebound restored growth and pushed the series to a new high.

For anyone modelling Denmark's health budget or benchmarking it against peer economies, the 2021 figure is best treated as a cyclical high rather than a new baseline — it took three years for spending to durably clear that level. The lowest point in the 2010–2024 window was 2011, at 4,630.9 EUR, meaning the series has risen by roughly 35% in nominal euro terms over its 15-year span. Because the underlying figure is euro-denominated rather than PPS-adjusted, that growth rate blends real spending increases with currency and price effects over the period; it is not on its own a measure of real purchasing power gained.

Related data: Same indicator, PPS basis · Denmark health expenditure, % of GDP · Health spending per capita across Europe · Sweden · Norway · Finland · Germany · Netherlands