Impact of Coronavirus Disease COVID-19 on the Relationship between Healthcare Expenditures and Sustainable Economic Growth

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic led to a catastrophic burden on the healthcare system and increased expenditures for the supporting medical infrastructure. It also had dramatic socioeconomic consequences. The purpose of this study is to identify the empirical patterns of healthcare expenditures’ influence on sustainable economic growth in the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods. Fulfilment of the research task involves the implementation of two empirical blocks: (1) development of a Sustainable Economic Growth Index based on public health, environmental, social, and economic indicators using principal component analysis, ranking, Fishburne approach, and additive convolution; (2) modelling the impact of different kinds of healthcare expenditures (current, capital, general government, private, out-of-pocket) on the index using panel data regression modelling (random-effects GLS regression). Regression results in the pre-pandemic period show that the growth of capital, government, and private healthcare expenditures positively influence sustainable economic growth. In 2020–2021, healthcare expenditures did not statistically significantly influence sustainable economic growth. Consequently, more stable conditions allowed capital healthcare expenditures to boost economic growth, while an excessive healthcare expenditure burden damaged economic stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the pre-pandemic period, public and private healthcare expenditures ensured sustainable economic growth; out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures dominantly contributed to the pandemic period.

Health Capital and a Sustainable Economic-Growth Nexus: A High-Frequency-Data Analysis during COVID-19

“…As elucidated in the literature survey section, the empirical investigation into the relationship between health expenditures and economic growth has garnered significant attention in recent years (e.g., [51][52][53]55,56,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]). However, the bulk of these studies primarily focus on underdeveloped and developing countries (e.g., [52,53,55,56,59,[61][62][63][64][65]), with relatively scant attention paid to developed nations [51]. However, it is noteworthy that the growth dynamics of developed and developing economies diverge significantly.…”

“…Hence, it is unsurprising that the relationship between health expenditure and economic growth has been empirically investigated extensively in recent decades (among many others, see [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]). However, these studies mainly focus on underdeveloped and developing countries [52,53,55,56,59,[61][62][63][64][65], while research on developed countries is relatively rare [46,51,54,57,58]. Nevertheless, the sources of growth for developed and developing economies are not exactly the same.…”

Impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on cancer care: How the pandemic has changed cancer utilization and expenditures

“…In the United States, several studies estimated the immediate or direct medical costs of COVID-19 and predicted that there would be high costs related to hospitalisations [16,[45][46][47]. In contrast, some experts insisted that medical costs seemed to be substantially reduced; ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in economic burdens for patients with certain diseases or older patients [48]. Considering our findings that medical costs increased inversely with the significant decrease in the number of admissions, the financial loss due to COVID-19 has been immense and has threatened the financial stability of vulnerable individuals [46,47,49].…”

Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide, and Methane: What Types of Greenhouse Gases Are Most Affected by Green Investments and Renewable Energy Development?

“…Another issue to analyze is the impact of COVID-19 on various sectors of the economy, in particular the energy sector [51] and the environment [52,53]. The corporate activity of economic stakeholders in forming and ensuring their green brand is also an integral part of developing an ecological society [54,55].…”