The Relationship between Health Indicators and Development Ranks of Provinces in Turkey

Abstract

It is known that health has a significant positive effect on the rate of economic development in a country. However current research rarely permits the understanding of what the most important indicators are in the level of development. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between health indicators and development levels of provinces. The data on the development level of the provinces was obtained from "Socio-Economic Development Ranking of Provinces and Regions," published in 2013 by the Ministry of Development of the Republic of Turkey. The number of health workers per ten thousand people, the number of hospitals, hospital beds, and the infant mortality rate by provinces was obtained from the web site of the Turkey Statistical Institute (TSI). At the end of the multiple regression analyses, it was found that the development ranks of provinces was effected by the number of pharmacists per ten thousand people, and the number of hospitals. According to these findings, the human resources for health, especially the number of pharmacists per ten thousand and the number of hospitals, could be taken into account in research on development rankings, and these indicators could be used as substitution variables for the development levels.

Chronic diseases and labour resources: “Old and new” European Union member states

“…Cole and Neumayer (2006) argue that a key mechanism through which health affects growth is via total factor productivity (TFP) and their results suggest that poor health can indeed reduce aggregate productivity. However, attempts taken to define the benefits that follow from activities aimed at an improvement of the health of society confirm the existence of an added correlation between such parameters as expenses on health and access to medical care and those indexes that measure the economic growth level of an area (Suchecka & Antczak, 2016, p. 119;Taşkaya et al, 2016, Reeves et al, 2013Zandi, et al, 2020). Nevertheless, impediments should be taken into consideration here that occur in comparisons of health condition between the populations of individual countries, regions, areas (towns, villages) or social stratification (the rich, the poor).…”