Determinants of Public Health Personnel Spending in Spain

Elena Puerto-Casasnovas (), Jorge Galiana-Richart, Maria Paola Mastrantonio-Ramos, Francisco López-Muñoz and Alfredo Rocafort-Nicolau
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Elena Puerto-Casasnovas: Departamento de Empresa, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 690-696, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
Jorge Galiana-Richart: Departamento de Empresa, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 690-696, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
Maria Paola Mastrantonio-Ramos: Departamento de Economía, EUNCET Business School, 08225 Barcelona, Spain
Francisco López-Muñoz: Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Camilo José Cela, Urb. Villafranca del Castillo, Calle Castillo de Alarcón 49, Villanueva de la Cañada, 28692 Madrid, Spain
Alfredo Rocafort-Nicolau: Departamento de Empresa, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 690-696, 08034 Barcelona, Spain

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: Public health is funded with government funds gathered from tax revenues, whether national, provincial or municipal. The health system therefore suffers during economic crisis periods, whether due to disinvestment, loss of purchasing power among health care personnel or the decrease in the number of professionals. This worsens the situation, as it is necessary to cover the needs of an increasingly elderly population and with a longer life expectancy at birth. The present study intends to show a model which explains the determination of the “Public Health Personnel Expenditure” in Spain for a determined period. A multiple linear regression model was applied to the period including the years 1980–2021. Macroeconomic and demographic variables were analyzed to explain the dependent variable. Variation in health personnel expenditure: “We included those variables which presented a high or very high correlation above r > 0.6. The variables which explain the behavior of Variation in health personnel expenditure”. It was a determining factor in the present study to consider that the variables with the greatest repercussions on health policy were mainly macroeconomic variables rather than demographic variables, with the only significant demographic variable that had a specific weight lower than macroeconomic variables being “Birth Rate”. In this sense, the contribution made to the scientific literature is to establish an explanatory model so that public policy managers and states in particular can consider it in their public spending policies, bearing in mind that health expenditures in a Beveridge-style health system, as Spain has, are paid with funds drawn from tax revenues.

Keywords: public health expenses; public expenditures; GDP; public health personnel expenditures; Spanish health system; demographic factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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