The Relative Effects of Economic Growth, Environmental Pollution and Non-Communicable Diseases on Health Expenditures in European Union Countries

Abstract

National and global health policies are increasingly recognizing the key role of the environment in human health development, which is related to its economic and social determinants, such as income level, technical progress, education, quality of jobs, inequality, education or lifestyle. Research has shown that the increase of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita can provide additional funds for health but also for environmental protection. However, often, economic growth is associated with the accelerated degradation of the environment, and this in turn will result in an exponential increase in harmful emissions and will implicitly determine the increasing occurrence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases. In this paper, we investigate the role and effects of economic growth, environmental pollution and non-communicable diseases on health expenditures, for the case of EU (European Union) countries during 2000–2014. In order to investigate the long-term and the short-term relationship between them, we have employed the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method. Using the Pedroni-Johansen cointegration methods, we found that the variables are cointegrated. The findings of this study show that economic growth is one of the most important factors influencing the health expenditures both in the long- and short-run in all the 28 EU countries. With regards to the influence of CO2 emissions on health expenditure, we have found a negative impact in the short-run and a positive impact on the long-run. We have also introduced an interaction between NCDs and environmental expenditure as independent variable, a product variable. Finally, we have found that in all the three estimated models, the variation in environmental expenditure produces changes in NCDs’ effect on health expenditure.

The Effect of Business Cycles on Health Expenditure: A Story of Income Inequality in China

“…That is, economic booms lead to more health expenditure, while recessions have a negative effect on health expenditure. The studies also have stated that there are many reasons for the above situations, such as medical affordability (6)(7)(8) and environmental quality (9)(10)(11)(12)(13). However, some scholars have claimed that the link between business cycles and health expenditure varies with the income level.…”

The Role of Macroeconomic Indicators on Healthcare Cost

“…Following the ground-breaking study of Newhouse [6], the determinants of healthcare expenditure have been categorized into economic and non-economic factors [7]. According to [8,9], the economic factors influencing health expenditure include per capita gross domestic product (PGDP), tax revenue, liquidity rate, inflation, trade (exports plus imports) while the non-economic variables consist of population, education and lifestyle [10]. Tajudeen [11] established that increase in macroeconomic indicators especially income is crucial for the provision of comprehensive health care that is important for promoting and maintaining population health.…”

Employment of Simulants for Testing Constructive Materials Designed for Body Surface Isolative Protection in Relation to Chemical Warfare Agents

“…Generally, a technological process of making a product (with all its stages, from the idea to the resulting waste) aims to achieve satisfactory economic performance for the producer and a quality product for the beneficiary (in this case the military). Thus, information from numerous research fields correlate to ensure maximum productivity and getting optimum finite products [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. The permanent qualitative evaluation of materials produced for the use of the army and the innovation of new ones, with better protection performances, require an efficient and sustainable management from industrial producers in the field [5,6,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”