Economic Development, Population Ageing, and Urbanisation as Predictors of National Health Expenditure Across Global Economies
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This analysis examines whether international healthcare spending patterns reflect economic development and demographic composition within economies rather than differences between them. World Development Indicators provide 2,659 complete annual observations across 192 economies during 2010 to 2024. Descriptive statistics and Spearman correlations are combined with logarithmic expenditure regression incorporating economy and year fixed effects and standard errors clustered by economy. Economic development shows a positive conditional association with expenditure, with an estimated elasticity of 0.799 and a 95 percent confidence interval from 0.566 to 1.032. Economic output higher by 10 percent corresponds to expenditure higher by approximately 7.91 percent. Positive pooled correlations for ageing and urbanisation coexist with imprecise conditional estimates, distinguishing international rankings from temporal relationships. Excluding the sparsely covered final year and restricting estimation to a balanced panel preserve the principal findings. The evidence refines expenditure frameworks by separating economic capacity from demographic composition without identifying causal pathways. International budget planning should evaluate financing conditions and reporting coverage rather than transfer pooled demographic spending patterns directly into national expenditure expectations.
Author: Kannan Vishwanath & Lloyd Zulu
Language: English
Topic: Global Health Care Issues
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225559939