Abstract:

The recent economic and political crises in European countries and South America; the wars in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and the resulting immigration have made employment more important concept globally. Along with the economic crisis in the European region, employment problems have arisen in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece and the unemployment rate has remained above 10%. In Turkey, unemployment is a significant problem for so many years. In recent years, in order to resolve employment issue, Turkey implemented government-supported programs to pay taxes for companies for a certain period of time. The health condition of the population involved in employment, just like unemployment itself, is another problem for countries. People to be employed must be healthy and suitable to work first. In order to create a productive and healthy working populations, Turkey allocates serious budget for health expenditure every year. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between total health expenditure and employment rates for the 1988-2016 period in Turkey. For this purpose, the relationship between employment rates between 1988-2016 and total health expenditures (public + private) was examined by Granger Causality Test. Eviews 8.1 package program was used to analyze the data. The result of the study indicated that there was no significant causal relationship between employment rates and the total health expenditure in Turkey.

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