Department of Economics, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan.
Int J Health Plann Manage. 2021 May;36(3):925-944. doi: 10.1002/hpm.3132. Epub 2021 Mar 11.
This study examines the association between health expenditures, economic growth (EG) and environmental pollution in Asia both at panel and country level. The separate impact of EG and environmental pollution on public and private health expenditures (PRHEs) are also examined. In doing so the panel cointegration tests with the level break, common correlated effects mean group and heterogeneous panel causality test are employed. The study covers 20 Asian economies and time-period from 1995 to 2017. The results provide evidence in support of a long run association between selected variables. The results explain that EG and environmental pollution are positively associated with total health expenditures as well as with public and PRHEs in all countries. However, the magnitude of environmental pollution coefficient is greater from EG coefficient, thus indicate that environmental pollution is the key determinant in increasing national health expenditures. Causality results demonstrate the existence of two-way causality between health expenditures and EG and unidirectional causality flowing from environmental pollution to health expenditures in Asian economies. Findings of this study have provided some important suggestions to policy makers which can be used to minimize the risk of environmental pollution on health in Asian economies.
本研究在面板和国家层面上考察了亚洲卫生支出、经济增长（EG）和环境污染之间的关系。还分别考察了 EG 和环境污染对公共和私人卫生支出（PRHEs）的单独影响。为此，采用了带有水平断点的面板协整检验、共同相关效应均值组和异质面板因果关系检验。该研究涵盖了 20 个亚洲经济体和 1995 年至 2017 年的时间跨度。结果为选定变量之间存在长期关联提供了证据。结果表明，在所有国家，EG 和环境污染与总卫生支出以及公共和 PRHEs 呈正相关。然而，环境污染系数的幅度大于 EG 系数，这表明环境污染是增加国家卫生支出的关键决定因素。因果关系结果表明，卫生支出和 EG 之间存在双向因果关系，以及亚洲经济体中从环境污染到卫生支出的单向因果关系。本研究的结果为决策者提供了一些重要建议，可用于最大限度地降低亚洲经济体中环境污染对健康的风险。
