BackgroundDeveloping countries have witnessed economic growth as their GDP keeps increasing steadily over the years. The growth led to higher energy consumption which eventually leads to increase in air pollutions that pose a danger to human health. People’s healthcare demand, in turn, increase due to the changes in the socioeconomic life and improvement in the health technology. This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of environmental quality on per capital health expenditure in 125 developing countries within a panel cointegration framework from 1995 to 2012.ResultsWe found out that a long-run relationship exists between per capita health expenditure and all explanatory variables as they were panel cointegrated. The explanatory variables were found to be statistically significant in explaining the per capita health expenditure. The result further revealed that CO2 has the highest explanatory power on the per capita health expenditure. The impact of the explanatory power of the variables is greater in the long-run compared to the short-run. Based on this result, we conclude that environmental quality is a powerful determinant of health expenditure in developing countries.ConclusionTherefore, developing countries should as a matter of health care policy give provision of healthy air a priority via effective policy implementation on environmental management and control measures to lessen the pressure on health care expenditure. Moreover more environmental proxies with alternative methods should be considered in the future research.

The current study investigated the association between out-of-pocket health expenditure and poverty using macroeconomic data from a sample of 145 countries from 2000 to 2017. In particular, it was examined whether the relationship between out-of-pocket health expenditure and poverty was contingent on a certain threshold level of out-of-pocket health spending. The dynamic panel threshold method, which allows for the endogeneity of the threshold regressor (out-of-pocket health expenditure), was used. Three indicators were adopted as poverty measures, namely the poverty headcount ratio, the poverty gap index, and the poverty gap squared index. At the same time, out-of-pocket health expenditure was measured as a percentage of total health expenditure. The results showed the validity of the estimated threshold models, indicating that only beyond the turning point, which was about 29 percent, that out-of-pocket health spending led to increased poverty. When heterogeneity was controlled for in the sample, using the World Bank income classification, the findings showed variations in the estimated threshold, with higher values for the low- and lower-middle-income groups, as compared to the high-income group. For the lower-income groups, below the threshold for out-of-pocket health expenditure, it had a positive or insignificant effect on poverty reduction, while it led to higher poverty above the threshold. Further, the sampled countries were divided into regions, according to the World Health Organization. Generally, improving health care systems through tolerable levels of out-of-pocket health expenditure is an inevitable step toward better health coverage and poverty reduction in many developing countries.

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Using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags model, we confirm that the response of consumer prices to the changes in the exchange rate is asymmetric in the short and long run. The analysis reveals that moderate inflation is associated with currency depreciation while no material effect is observed during appreciation in the short run. In the long run, depreciation is passed through to consumer prices rather than appreciation. We find that 10 per cent depreciation in the Sudanese pound leads to approximately an eight percentage point increase in consumer price levels. The resultinflation in Sudan is largely driven by sharp depreciation episodessuggests the need to mitigate the disruptive effects of sharp depreciations. We find that the impact of oil price shocks on domestic inflation is insignificant, a finding that is consistent with the recent international evidence.

Despite remarkable improvements in health over the past 50 years, there still remain a great number of health challenges around the world. This study examined the relationship between life expectancy rate (as a proxy for health status) with health expenditure, gross domestic product, education index, improved water coverage, and improved sanitation facilities in 108 selected developing countries using annual panel data within the period of 2006-2010. The empirical results from using the panel data approach showed a positive relationship between life expectancy rate and all of those explanatory variables. The relationship between life expectancy with education index and gross domestic product were significant at 1% and 5% significance levels, respectively. Furthermore, the causality finding showed that there is no short-run causality between life expectancy and its determinants. There is a unidirectional causality running from the independent variables of health expenditure, education index, improved water, and improved sanitation to life expectancy at birth. On the other hand, bidirectional causality exists between life expectancy and income in the long-run by employing VECM test. These independent variables can be considered as important determinants for investment in health status in the long-run. This study could be used as a guideline and may be significant for future researchers and policy makers who aim to improve the life expectancy in developing countries.