Determinants of Health Expenditures in OECD Countries

Around the world, governments are coping with spiraling health care spending. This spurs the need for further insight in the determinants of such expenditures. This study investigates the determinants of health care expenditures for a sample of thirty five countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2000 to 2013 in order to understand the impact of different factors on health care spending growth. Besides Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the study accounts for many different driving forces such as demographics, medical progress, health system characteristics, public financing, and other non-medical determinants of health spending such as alcohol and tobacco consumption. Fixed and random-effects panel data models were used to examine the factors influencing health care expenditures and their results are compared