Health expenditures, environmental quality, and economic development: State-of-the-art review and findings in the context of COP26

Abstract

There are numerous factors that affect human health. Among others, environmental degradation, bad governance, and extensive economic growth are regarded as more destructive for health-related issues. To explore the nexus of the said factors and extend the scholarly literature, the current study aims to analyze the influence of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, governance indicators, and gross domestic product (GDP) on human health expenditures—captured by domestic health expenditures and capital health expenditures. Specifically, this study contrasted variables including regulatory quality (RQ), rule of law (RL), GDP, GHG emissions, and human capital (HC) with that of human health expenditure. Covering the period from 1996 to 2020, this study uses time series specifications in the case of China, which is one of the largest pollution-emitting economies across the globe. The empirical results found that the long-run equilibrium relationship exists between the variables. For the long-run coefficients, this study utilizes the fully modified ordinary least square, dynamic ordinary least square, and canonical cointegration regression, suggesting that economic development and RQ are adversely affecting human health expenditure. However, GHG emissions, RQ, and HC significantly improve human health by increasing health expenditure in China. Based on the empirical results, policies are suggested regarding human health improvement, improved governance quality, and environmental sustainability. The study discusses the empirical conclusions and implications as per COP26 declarations.

Re-visiting the Nexus Between Energy Consumption, Environmental Quality and Health Expenditure in Gulf and North American Regions

“…Our results predict that CO2 emission significantly contribute to health expenditure in GULF and North American regions, which implies that CO2 emission threatens the human health and create diseases due to which household as well as government has to consume more budget to deal with rising health issues that emerges due to the increasing CO2 emission. In the existing body there are instances that evidence that CO2 emission increases the health expenditure budget of household and government (Xing & Liu, 2022;. Recall our results Shahbaz, Tiwari, and Nasir (2013) examined that in the long run the ENQ 2 because of reduction in CO2 emissions.…”

Asymmetric Effects of Human Health Capital on Economic Growth in China: An Empirical Investigation Based on the NARDL Model

“…Increased private and state spending boosts the positive impact of health investment on economic growth, as the productivity of the workforce depends on their health status [6,21]. The healthier the labor force is, the higher the economic efficiency of the country [10,[22][23][24]. Health is foundational for people to be able to work, and it affects the economy by increasing potential human health capital.…”