THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC HEALTH EXPENDITURE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT - EVIDENCE FROM PREFECTURE-LEVEL PANEL DATA OF SHANDONG PROVINCE

摘要

Public health expenditure is an indispensable part of social economy. The public has always paid close attention to public health expenditure. In order to study the quantitative relation between public health expenditure and social economic development, this paper investigates prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province, due to the unique characteristics of Shandong Province. Making theoretical and empirical contribution, this paper augments Cobb-Douglas production function with public health expenditure and empirically analyzes economic development of prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province. A panel data set is set up, followed by multivariate regression analysis. Empirical results find that public health expenditure per capita and coverage of medical insurance can significantly promote the development of social economy. At the same time, expansion of the scale of health institutions and growth of the number of health institutions cannot promote economic development. Instead, it may even hold back economic development by causing personnel redundancy and waste of resources. If the government transfers its investment focus from the scale and the speed of development of medical services to the fairness and the efficiency of medical services, public health expenditure may bring greater benefits to the improvement of both social public health condition and economic development.