Health And Convergence Of Health Care Expenditure In EU

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to review and analyze the health of population and health care expenditure and to examine the trends of convergence of health care expenditure in EU countries. One of the most often used indicators characterizing a populations health is life expectancy at birth. Comparative analyses show that the life expectancy at birth in EU-12 countries is much lower than in EU-15 countries. Although in 1992-2004 the life expectancy increased both in EU-15 countries and in EU-12 countries, the differences in the life expectancy have still remained more or less the same. Besides the low life expectancy in EU-12 countries, also the resources used in health care are below the EU-15 average level. In our paper we test the ?-, ?- and ?-convergence of the health care expenditure. For testing ?-, ?- and ?-convergence the authors have used cross-sectional data over the period 1992-2004 for health care expenditure as share of GDP and per capita health care expenditure. Data of the World Health Organization (WHO) were used for the research. The study demonstrates that although usually the increase of economic integration facilitates economic growth, the mere fact of the European Union enlargement does not bring along an automatic homogenization of health care expenditure and health policy in the EU-12 countries.

Disentangling the heterogeneous income elasticity and dynamics of health expenditure

“…To this end, we carry out two approaches rooted on the traditional concept of economic convergence from the neoclassical growth theory (Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 1995). They were recently considered for health-care expenditure in Nixon (1999), Kerem et al (2008), Wang (2009) or Leiter and Theurl (2012). Figure 4 provides evidence to support sigma-convergence.…”

“…Hence, Nixon (1999) supports the existence of both convergence and integration of health-care expenditure in the European Union (EU) countries. Kerem et al (2008) indicate that -although the increase of economic integration facilitates economic growth -the mere fact of the EU enlargement does not bring along an automatic homogenization of health-care expenditure. Wang (2009) obtains moderate evidence of convergence in total health-care expenditure -and diverse performance of the expenditure components -across the US states.…”

Inequalities and convergence of health outcomes in South Asian countries

“…To explore the extent of inequalities among the health outcomes, coefficient of variation and Gini co-efficient are utilized. 12 Furthermore, to study convergence of health outcomes following well-accepted models has also been utilized: [17][18] (a) Absolute σ-convergence…”

The convergence of health care financing structures: empirical evidence from OECD-countries

“…So far, studies of this type have been characterized by (very) small sample sizes (see for example Aldridge & Sundarapandiyan 1995, Globerman & Vining 1998, Globerman, Hodges & Vining 2001. The majority of the studies on convergence are single-dimensional thereby preferring health expenditures -either per capita or as a ratio to GDP, as a whole or split into its major components (public vs. private, inpatient vs. outpatient) -as indicators of convergence/divergence (ComasHerrera 1999, Nixon 1999, Nixon 2000, Hitiris & Nixon 2001, Dreger & Reimers 2005, Kerem, Puss & Maldre 2008. 2 Studies on convergence in the financing structure (e. g. private vs. public) of the health care sector are missing.…”

“…The first type of studies is heavily influenced by the convergence hypothesis derived from the neoclassical growth theory and uses the concepts of σ-convergence and absolute and conditional β-convergence. Initially, this concept was based on cross-section data, in recent studies this approach was also applied to panel data sets and methods (Nixon 2000, Hitiris & Nixon 2001, Sanz & Velázquez 2004, Kerem et al 2008. The second strand of literature is based on time series analyses.…”