The Relationship Between Young Populations, Life Expectancy at Birth, Number Of Doctors and Health Expenditure in Turkey: An Econometric Application

Abstract

Health care expenditure is a major health policy concern worldwide. To assist decision-makers in finding best policies to manage health care cost, it is important to understand the factors that affect health care expenditure. The objective of this study is to analyze the effects of youth population aged less than 15, life expectancy at birth and doctors providing direct care to patients on the health expenditure in Turkey and how they affect the health expenditure in Turkey during 1975- 2013 period. Augmented Dickey Fuller and Phillips-Perron tests are employed to check whether the variables are stationary or not. Then Johansen Cointegration test and VECM approach are employed to investigate the long-run dynamics and short-run relationship between health expenditure and youth population aged less than 15,(POP15) life expectancy at birth(LIFEX) and doctors (DOCTORS) providing direct care to patients. According to results, A unit increase in the POP15 leads to a 1.99 unit decrease in the HE in the long run, A unit increase in the LIFEX leads to a 0.37 unit increase in the HE in the long run. A unit increase in the DOCTORS leads to a 5.39 unit decrease in the HE in the long run. The coefficient of Error Correction Model, indicating the speed of adjustment to restore equilibrium in the dynamic model and how quickly variables converge to equilibrium, is equal to (-0.160506) and imply that more than %16 percent of disequilibrium in the previous year corrected in the current year

Keywords

• Health Expenditure
• Vector Error Correction Model
• Johansen Cointegration

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