The relationship between health spending and economic growth: The case of Turkey

The purpose of this study is examined the causality relationship between health sector and economic growth in the view of Turkey. Turkey's health sector and economic growth is used to define the relationship between health sector development and economic growth. In this study primarily focused on the relationship between the human capital and the health concept. In today?s modern economies one of the most important factors that expecting development is human capital. Despite the education constitutes the main source of human capital health level of the community is appears to be another factor that contribute to the development of feeding of human capital. In this direction there is a close relationship between the level of health and the economic development of the society. While defining the structure of a country's health expenditures because of the health systems being determinant factors; the study provides information on the health care system in Turkey and then health expenditures in the system have been revealed. In this study povides general information about the concept of health and health service and made statements about the health economy which is increasingly gaining importance in developed countries. The main subject of the study to explain the relationship between health spending and economic growth in GDP and health indicators like life expectancy at birth, number of persons per health personnel, etc... were examined over the years. And with improvements in health indicators in OECD countries are compared. The relationship between health expenditures and economic growth were evaluated with the causality which is an econometric analysis method. The result is, Turkey's health indicators are not very encouraging. In addition, as a result of the analysis of causality concluded that a mutual relationship between the economic growth and health expenditures. Keywords: Health Sector, Economic Growth, GDP, Life Expectancy at Birth, Number of Persons per Health Personnel, Granger Causality Test.