Abstract
Papers on population aging and the effects of environmental quality on health expenditure have critical policy consequences. However, findings in the relevant literature are mixed, and papers generally focus on developed countries. To provide new information to the literature, this paper examines the impact of globalization, economic growth, greenhouse gas emissions, and population aging on health expenditures in emerging market economies with annual data for the period 2000 to 2018. The paper follows a second-generation advanced panel data method that considers cross-sectional dependency. The estimation results reveal that population aging, economic growth, and greenhouse gas emissions have an increasing effect on health expenditures, while globalization has a decreasing effect. Furthermore, one-way causality running from population aging to health expenditures is confirmed, while a feedback causality relationship is observed between health expenditures and other indicators (globalization, economic growth, and greenhouse gas emissions). After all, the outputs of this paper can provide critical policy implications about the relationships between aging, globalization, air quality, and health expenditures in developing countries.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse gas emissions
- CO2:
-
Carbon dioxide emissions
- AMG:
-
Augmented mean group
- PCSE:
-
Panel-corrected standard error
- FGLS:
-
Feasible generalized least squares
- FMOLS:
-
Fully modified ordinary least squares
- OECD:
-
Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development
- WHO:
-
World Health Organization
- AI:
-
Aging index
- AP:
-
Ageing population
- BRICS:
-
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
- ECOF:
-
Ecological footprint
- POP65 + :
-
People aged 65 and over
- TR:
-
Trade openness
- STIRPAT:
-
Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology
- ECO:
-
Economic openness
- FDI:
-
Foreign direct investment
- GLO:
-
Globalization
- WDI:
-
World Development Indicators
- PMG:
-
Pooled mean group
- CD:
-
Cross-sectional dependence
- HDI:
-
Human development index
- IND:
-
Industrialization
- LE:
-
Life expectancy
- HE:
-
Health expenditure
- AIC:
-
Akaike information criterion
- OLS:
-
Ordinary least squares method
- NOEP:
-
Number of elderly people
- URB:
-
Urbanization
- MSC:
-
Emerging Market Index
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Conceptualization, material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Eyyup Ecevit, Murat Cetin, and Emrah Kocak. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Rabia Dogan and Ozge Yildiz, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Ecevit, E., Cetin, M., Kocak, E. et al. Greenhouse gas emissions, economic globalization, and health expenditures nexus: does population aging matter in emerging market economies?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 29961–29975 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24274-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24274-0