Public Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Pakistan: Evidence from Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model

Abstract

Irfan Ullah,1 Assad Ullah,2 Sher Ali,3 Petra Poulova,4 Ahsan Akbar,5 Muhammad Haroon Shah,6 Alam Rehman,7 Muhammad Zeeshan,8 Fakhr E Alam Afridi3 1Reading Academy, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Economics, Henan University, Kaifeng, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Economics, Islamia College Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan; 4Department of Informatics and Quantitative Methods, Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove, Hradec Kralove, 500 03, Czech Republic; 5International Business School, Guangzhou City University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510080, People’s Republic of China; 6College of International Students, Wuxi University, Wuxi 214105, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China; 7Faculty of Management Sciences, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan; 8College of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, XingCheng, Liaoning Province, 125105, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Ahsan AkbarInternational Business School, Guangzhou City University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510080, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail [email protected]: The provision of healthcare facilities remains high on the manifesto of various political parties in Pakistan and healthcare spending has witnessed a significant surge in the last two decades that is expected to positively influence health outcomes in the country. Therefore, this research aims to explore the effects of healthcare expenditures on the actual health status of the masses in Pakistan for the period 1995Q1 to 2017Q1.Methods: We apply the Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag (QARDL) approach for estimation purposes. This is the most recent and emerging estimation technique in time series analysis.Results: Our findings confirm that public healthcare spending significantly impacts health outcomes in Pakistan both in the short-run and long-run. Public healthcare spending improves life expectancy and reduces death rate and infant mortality.Conclusion: The study concludes that public healthcare is the main focus of the current regime. It is noticed that spending on healthcare significantly contributes to the health outcomes in Pakistan. These efforts by the government significantly promote life expectancy and drop down the mortality ratio in the country. Based on these notable facts, the government should allocate sufficient resources towards the latest healthcare technologies and equipment to optimize health outcomes in the country.Keywords: healthcare spending, health outcomes, healthcare technologies, Quantile cointegration, QARDL, Pakistan

Keywords

• healthcare spending
• health outcomes
• healthcare technologies
• quantile cointegration
• qardl
• pakistan.