THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH EXPENDITURE AND SOCIOECONOMIC/DEMOGRAPHIC INDICATORS: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

Abstract

Health is a matter of human rights. Factors affecting health includes health expenditures. All health expenditures are regarded as investments in human beings and is necessary for the development of society. It is known that the health status of countries which allocate more resources in health is higher. The current research was performed to analyse the relationship between countries’ health expenditures and socioeconomic /demographic factors.
In the study, five health expenditure variables and eight socioeconomic /demographic factors were examined. A total of 180 countries with available data were included in the study sample. Data was obtained from World Health Statistics (2014), “data.worldbank.org” and the Human Development Report (2014). Descriptive statistics were calculated and correlational analyses were performed. Data was analyzed using the SPSS 19.0 software.

It was found that there are significant differences in health expenditures across countries. Regarding total health expenditures, there was a 10-fold difference between the highest and lowest values. Countries with high income allocated more resources in health and significant relationships between health expenditure variables and socioeconomic /demographic factors were found. It is concluded that the general economic and health status of undeveloped/developing countries can be improved by developing appropriate economic policies.

Keywords

• Health Expenditure,socio-demographic indicators,health and inequality

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