Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast (Nov 2015)
Assessment of the Effectiveness of Public Investment in the Increase in Life Expectancy
Abstract
The beginning of the 21st century was marked by the emergence of national projects in our country, which exactly correspond to the private integral indicators used by the UN in calculating the index of human capital development since 1996. The national project “Health care” is aimed at increasing life expectancy, “Education” – expanding the population’s access to knowledge, “Doubling GDP” – raising people’s income. Attaching equal importance to each indicator, the author of the article set a task to consider the economic efficiency of budgetary funds allocated to improve the nation’s health. The author assumed a proportion as the main hypotheses about the nature of correlation between life expectancy (H) and expenditures on health care (G); the calculated coefficients of correlation (Pearson, r) of dependence H = f(G) for all RF subjects for 2003–2013 (0.49 < r < or = 0.97) confirmed the existence of correlation. The author proposed to use the slope of the straight H = f(G) to x-axis as a quantitative value, indicating the economic efficiency of the transformation of budget expenditures to the increase in life expectancy. This indicator means that the achieved increase in life expectancy (Y axis motion) depending on changes in budget expenditures on health (axis motion). The proposed indicator to estimate the socio-economic effectiveness of state investments in domestic health care guarantees the most objective and clear assessment, conducted on the basis of standard methods of mathematical statistics, ensuring a high accuracy of the calculations. The rate of rise in life expectancy, depending on the volume of public investment in health care, can be used for the scientific justification, for example, of the degree of Federal budget participation in the regional programs to promote national health
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