Abstract:

Health expenditures, on the one hand, increase the health level of people, on the other hand, they accelerate development with their contributions to human capital. All expenditures made for the protection and improvement of human health, ensuring its continuity and treatment of existing diseases are considered as health expenditures. The aim of this study during 1995-2018 in the E-7 countries (Brazil, Mexico, India, China, Indonesia, Turkey and Russia) is to analyze the factors affecting the health expenditure. While per capita health expenditure is used as the dependent variable in the study, the independent variables are life expectancy at birth, urbanization, unemployment and the proportion of the population aged 65 and over. The Westerlund (2006) panel cointegration test, which allows multiple structural fractures and takes into account horizontal cross-section dependence, was used to test the relationship between variables. Cointegration coefficients were obtained with the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimator developed by Eberhardt & Bond (2009), which takes into account heterogeneity and cross-section dependence. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that the most important factors affecting health expenditures in E-7 countries are life expectancy and unemployment at birth, urbanization and the proportion of the population aged 65 and over have no effect. 1% increase in life expectancy at birth causes approximately 15% increase in health expenditures, and 1% increase in unemployment rate causes a decrease of approximately 0,4% in health expenditures. In addition, the impact of a change in independent variables on health expenditure differs in each of the E-7 countries.

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