Income, Population Ageing, and Urbanisation as Predictors of National Health Expenditure Across Global Country Panels
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This analysis examines whether income, population ageing, and urbanisation explain national health expenditure beyond their pooled international associations. World Development Indicators provide 2,672 complete annual observations across 192 economies from 2010 to 2024. Pooled rank correlations are compared with logarithmic expenditure regressions incorporating economy and year effects, economy clustered inference, and coverage sensitivity checks. Income exhibits a positive expenditure elasticity of 0.686, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 0.557 to 0.815. A 10 percent income increase corresponds to approximately 6.76 percent higher nominal expenditure. Ageing and urbanisation display positive pooled correlations but imprecise conditional estimates under baseline inference. The income association persists across balanced coverage and sequential economy exclusions, whereas urbanisation inference changes under an alternative covariance calculation. These results support a resource constraint interpretation without identifying causal transmission mechanisms. The contribution distinguishes international expenditure rankings from conditional relationships and inferential stability. Globally, the evidence supports expenditure benchmarking against economic resources while cautioning against automatic budget adjustments based solely on demographic or settlement composition.
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: W7225567273