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The battle of health with environmental evils of Asian countries: promises to keep

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Abstract

The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between environmental indicators and health expenditures in the panel of five selected Asian countries, over the period of 2000–2013. The study used panel cointegration technique for evaluating the nexus between environment and health in the region. The results show that energy demand, forest area, and GDP per unit use of energy have a significant and positive impact on increasing health expenditures in the region. These results have been confirmed by single equation panel cointegration estimators, i.e., fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic OLS (DOLS), and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) estimators. In addition, the study used robust least squares regression to confirm the generalizability of the results in Asian context. All these estimators indicate that environmental indicators escalate the health expenditures per capita in a region; therefore, Asian countries should have to upsurge health expenditures for safeguard from environmental evils in a region.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, 81310, Johor, Malaysia

    Muhammad Imran Qureshi, Noor Ullah Khan & Amran Md. Rasli

  2. Department of Economics, University of Sargodha, Canal Campus, Lahore, Pakistan

    Khalid Zaman

Authors
  1. Muhammad Imran Qureshi
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  2. Noor Ullah Khan
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  3. Amran Md. Rasli
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  4. Khalid Zaman
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Amran Md. Rasli or Khalid Zaman.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Qureshi, M.I., Khan, N.U., Rasli, A.M. et al. The battle of health with environmental evils of Asian countries: promises to keep. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 11708–11715 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4440-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4440-8

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