Spatiotemporal Evolution and Drivers of Total Health Expenditure across Mainland China in Recent Years

Junming Li () and Xiulan Han ()
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Junming Li: School of Statistics, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Wucheng Road No. 140, Taiyuan 030006, China
Xiulan Han: School of Statistics, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Wucheng Road No. 140, Taiyuan 030006, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: A substantially growing health expenditure has become an important global issue. Thus, how and why health expenditure is rising should be urgently investigated in systematic research. The Bayesian space-time model and the Bayesian least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) model were employed in this study to investigate the spatiotemporal trends and influence patterns of total health expenditure per capita (THEPC) and total health expenditure (THEE) as a share of the gross domestic product (GDP) on the Chinese mainland from 2009 to 2018. The spatial distribution of THEE as a share of GDP in mainland China has shaped a distinct geographical structure with the characteristic of ‘west high/east low’. Its local increasing trends formed a geographical structure that exhibited a ‘north high/south low’ feature. The heterogeneity of the influence patterns of health expenditure was observed from east to west across China. Natural environmental factors, such as air pollution and green coverage, along with changes in dietary structures, have increasingly influenced the growth of health expenditures.

Keywords: spatiotemporal evolution; Bayesian statistics; health expenditure; China mainland; Bayesian LASSO model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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