Effects of public health expenditures on social welfare: Empirical evidences

Health is handled in various aspects in the literature as both a social right to life and an economic commodity. For this reason, health is shown as an important resource for the production of welfare, because total welfare is not only considered as economic welfare, but is analyzed within the scope of social welfare that includes economic welfare. More specifically, the level of social welfare depends on the public spending on social sectors such as health and education, in addition to income growth. Furthermore, this level varies according to the development level and governance quality of the countries. The Human Development Index (HDI), which is used as an indicator of social welfare in the literature, it is important to make progress in human development and therefore social welfare in both economic and social aspects. The HDI, which is used as a social welfare criterion in international comparisons, has a causal relationship with the level of governance quality as well as public health and education expenditures. Depending on the variables that affect social welfare in this line it is made empirical analysis for Turkey and selected countries in the world. Based on the analysis, basic research questions were sought. The aim of the thesis is to determine the direction and level of the relationship between HDI and public health expenditures, which are taken as a criterion in international comparisons. In time series analysis is made for Turkey (1990-2017), it was investigated long-term prediction coefficient and causality between variables. Coefficients for selected countries (high income and middle income) (1996-2017) are estimated using the random effects estimator. As a result, a positive relationship was found between social welfare and public health expenditures in both empirical applications and the effect size was different. Based on this, in order to further improve social welfare, which is seen as the target output of public health policies and expenditures, it is necessary to increase the share allocated to health expenditures or to pursue more effective policies through governance.