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The spillover effect of fiscal environmental protection spending on residents’ medical and healthcare expenditure: evidence from China

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Abstract

The Chinese government has not only been increasing investments in environmental protection, improving the quality of the ecological environment, but has also been focusing on curbing the excessive growth of medical and healthcare expenses so as to ease the economic burden of China’s residents. Both aspects are significant concerns worldwide and have received much research attention individually, but the relationship between government environmental protection expenditure and residents’ medical and healthcare expenditure remains unclear. Based on panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper empirically reveals that fiscal environmental protection expenditure is significantly negatively correlated with per capita medical and healthcare expenditure of residents (including outpatient expenditure and inpatient expenditure). This study shows that increasing the fiscal environmental protection expenditure can help curb the rising level of residents’ medical and healthcare expenditure. In addition, the results of heterogeneity analysis indicate that the above relationship is stronger in provinces with a relatively low level of economic development or low proportion of the population over 65 years old. Management implications are discussed.

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Availability of data and material (data transparency)

The datasets generated during or analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability (software application or custom code)

Stata/SE 16.0 for Windows was used for analysis during the current study. The code generated or analyzed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research is supported by the Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education of China (20YJC630138), the Anhui Natural Science Foundation (2008085QG345), the Fundamental Research Funding for Central Universities of China (WK2040000023), and the New Liberal Arts Fund of the University of Science and Technology of China (YD2040002010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Wenxiang Sheng

  2. School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 JinZhai Road, Baohe District, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China

    Liang Wan & Chengyuan Wang

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  1. Wenxiang Sheng
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  2. Liang Wan
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Correspondence to Liang Wan.

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Sheng, W., Wan, L. & Wang, C. The spillover effect of fiscal environmental protection spending on residents’ medical and healthcare expenditure: evidence from China. Environ Geochem Health 44, 2975–2986 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01146-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01146-z

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