Review of the health sector in OECD countries and the role of the impact of health on human capital on economic growth

Health is an important variable in extending human life and maintaining and improving the quality of life. The importance of health, defined as a person's complete physical, spiritual and social well-being, has become a current issue with the Covid-19 pandemic and has affected many fields around the World. From an economic perspective, the fact that health is one of the two basic determining factors of human capital and the positive effects of human capital on economic growth have been supported in theory by many studies. The aim of this study is to test the human capital variable in the Mankiw Romer Weil (MRW) model separately, by dividing it into two as education and health, and to reveal the effect of health on economic growth. In accordance with this purpose, in the first part, health, health indicators and health economics are explained and data for OECD countries are presented. In the second chapter, the relationship between economy and health is revealed, the MRW model is explained, and examples from the literature are presented. In the third section, analyzes were carried out using the panel data econometrics method. The findings obtained are in accordance with the theory, and it has been found that the life expectancy at birth, which is chosen as the health variable, has the biggest impact on the Gross Domestic Product per workforce.