The financial impacts of cancer

This new study examined the cost of cancer through a wide lens, considering the cost arising through lost incomes and increased expenditure across a broad range of areas of expense. It measured the total cost arising as a direct result of a diagnosis or treatment and explored the impact of this on households’ financial wellbeing and quality of life.
Calculated and expressed as a monthly equivalent cost, the study cannot provide any in-depth assessment of the longevity of the different costs that arise as a result of cancer. Nonetheless, the study relates the costs of cancer and their impacts to people’s demographic and socio-economic characteristics as well as their diagnosis and cancer journey. In this way, the findings help to identify which groups of people are most vulnerable to the costs of cancer, when and why.