Income and Technology as Drivers of Australian Healthcare Expenditures

The roles of income and technology as the major determinants of aggregate healthcare expenditure (HEXP) continue to interest economists and health policy researchers. Concepts and measures of medical technologies remain complex; however, income (on the demand side) and technology (on the supply side) are important drivers of HEXP. This paper presents analysis of Australia's HEXP, using time-series econometrics modeling techniques applied to 1971-2011 annual aggregate data. Our work fills two important gaps in the literature. First, we model the determinants of Australia's HEXP using the latest and longest available data series. Second, this novel study investigates several alternative technology proxies (input and output measures), including economy-wide research and development expenditures, hospital research expenditures, mortality rate, and two technology indexes based on medical devices. We then apply the residual component method and the technology proxy approach to quantify the technology effects on HEXP. Our empirical results suggest that Australian aggregate healthcare is a normal good and a technical necessity with the income elasticity estimates ranging from 0.51 to 0.97, depending on the model. The estimated technology effects on HEXP falling in the 0.30-0.35 range and mimicking those in the literature using the US data, reinforce the global spread of healthcare technology. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.