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Objectives: Considering the growth of the elderly population and the need of the elderly for health services and the importance of supplementary insurance on improving the quality of life of the elderly households, this study aimed to investigate the effect of supplementary health insurance on out-of-pocket payments for elderly households in urban areas of Iran. Methods: this descriptive-analytical and applied study was conducted at the national level using the two-stage Hackman econometric method in Stata 16 software in 2021. The sample size was 6171 elderly households which data was extracted from different sections of the cost and income questionnaire of Iranian urban households in 2019. Results: Increasing age, education, and employment of the head of the household, increasing household size, having a private home, increasing per capita health expenditures and income of household had a positive effect on the probability of purchasing medical insurance. Increasing the age, level of education and employment of the head of the household led to an increase in out-of-pocket payments for the elderly household by 61164, 84466 and 140032 Rials per month, respectively. Having supplementary health insurance, living in provinces with high human development and being an elderly head of household increased the out-of-pocket payments to 606207, 849739 and 109274 Rials per month, respectively. Conclusion: Elderly households were less likely than other households to purchase supplementary health insurance and having supplementary health insurance by an elderly household led to an increase in out-of-pocket payments compared to other elderly households. Therefore, to reduce out-of-pocket payments, increase coverage Insurance of health goods and services required by the elderly as well as reduction of the elderly franchise is offered.

Introduction: Military spending, education and health are among the most important components of the government budget, and making a balance between them is very complicated. Increasing military spending can increase or decrease health spending and health status. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of military spending on health status in Middle Eastern countries. Materials and Methods:The present descriptive-analytical and applied study was performed for Middle Eastern countries (including Iran) using the Paneldita method with cross-sectional dependence. Among Middle Eastern countries, 13 countries were selected as the statistical population by systematic sampling method. The data required for the study was an annual time series that was extracted from the World Bank databases for selected countries in 1990-2019. Boys CD, Boys Unit Root (CIPS test), Westerlund aggregation and model estimation with common mean group correlation effect estimators (CCEMG), generalized group mean (AMG), fully modified ordinary squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary squares (DOLS) ) In Eviews 10 and STATA 16 software. Results:The co-integration results of the models showed that Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP has a negative effect on life expectancy of -0.037 and -0.004 in AMG and CCEMG estimators, respectively, and a positive effect of 0.22 and 1.91 on the mortality rate of children under five years of age in FMOLS and DOLS estimators, respectively. The logarithm of GDP per capita had a positive effect on life expectancy of 0.553 and 0.588 in the AMG and CCEMG estimators, respectively. The annual growth rate of the urban population also had a positive effect of 0.048 on life expectancy with the AMG estimator.Conclusion: military expenditures as a percentage of GDP had a negative effect on life expectancy and a positive effect on the under-five mortality rate in the Middle East. GDP and urbanization rates also had a positive effect on life expectancy and a negative impact on the under-five mortality rate; Therefore, it is suggested to maintain a certain and appropriate ratio of military expenditures to other social expenditures. Also, some solutions to achieve greater security by reducing military expenditures are proposed.

Background: Health insurance is one of the important parts of financing in the health system to reduce inequality in household health expenditures. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the role of health insurance in facing health expenditures among urban female-headed households in Iran. Methods: This descriptive-analytical applied study was performed cross-sectionally using the double-sample selection econometrics method in Stata software (version 16) in 2021. The sample included 2645 female-headed households, and the data were prepared by the Statistics Center of Iran using a questionnaire. Results: The results showed that social security insurance, private insurance, and insurance of special organizations led to an increase in the health expenditures of female-headed households by 159896, 334137, and 18332 Rials, respectively. Increasing household size, having children, having an elderly person, increasing per capita income, and per capita tobacco expenditures led to an increase in the health expenditures of female-headed households by 875260, 1545153, 2441094, 0.32, and 1.65 Rials, respectively. Conclusions: Private insurance, social security insurance, and insurance of special organizations had the greatest impact on increasing the health expenditures of female-headed households, respectively. Therefore, it is necessary to create an integrated health insurance system that reduces insurance organizations and funds and provides the same level of coverage for health goods and services. It is also suggested to adopt policies to increase the educational level of female-headed households to reduce health expenditures.

Child labor is regarded as an ambiguous and controversial challenge encountered in majority of countries across the world. Given the incidence and prevalence of this phenomenon in Iran and the importance of household health expenditures, this study was done to evaluate the impact of children's entry into labor market on household health expenditures. This study was conducted on urban households living in all provinces in Iran in 2016. The sample size was estimated 6517 households. The statistics of these households were extracted from the raw data of income-cost of urban households. The probit and ordered probit econometric models were also used to estimate the coefficients of the model. The results showed that the entry of children into labor markets in both models had a positive impact on household health expenditures. Therefore, making policies for eliminating child labor, compensating the income they got from working, and providing the possibility of further education for these children were of utmost importance. Household income per capita, family size, father's age, and parental education had also a positive and significant effect on household health expenditures. Moreover, parental employment in private sector could increase household health expenditure, but such costs could be decreased if parents were employed in public sector.