Factors Affecting Health Expenditures in Islamic Countries of D-8 Group

Given the existence of a mutual relationship between human health and economic growth in societies, determining factors influencing human health can be effective in formulating executive policies and plans. The present study is designed to assess the effects of economic growth, government consumption expenditures and age dependency rate on health expenditures in Islamic countries of D-8 group during 1997-2014. Regarding the results of stationary tests, a new approach to panel econometric data -Panel Auto-regressive Distribution Lag (Panel ARDL) -was used to study the long-run and short-run relationship. Health goods and services for D-8 countries are considered as luxury and essential goods in the long-term and short-term. Also, two indicators of age old dependency ratio and young age dependency ratio, have a positive and negative impact on per capita health expenditure, respectively.