An assessment of economy- and transport-oriented health performance

Good health can prolong one's lifespan and is a fundamental human right. Thus, human health is being influenced by prejudiced from sociological, environmental, economic, and geographic aspects. The economy and transportation system pose a serious challenge to the assessment of the health performance of economies.

This study aims to assess the health performance of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economies by using economic and transport-related indicators and examining the role of health expenditure and governance in improving efficiency.

This study measures the economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency of 35 OECD economies for the period of 2000-2022. In the first stage, this study employs a slacks-based measure and the data envelopment analysis-window analysis approach to conduct individual (economy and transportation) and joint assessments to measure health efficiency. In the second stage, this study uses the tobit regression method to investigate the effects of influencing factors, namely, government general health and pharmaceutical expenditures, the medical infrastructure, and governance, on health efficiency.

Empirical results reveal that a 1-unit change in the health expenditure during the research period improves economy-oriented health efficiency by 71% and transport-oriented health efficiency by 58%. The econometric analysis demonstrates that all the coefficients of economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency are significant and positive. Notably, a 1-unit change in the medical infrastructure increases economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency by 50.8%, and a 1% increase in pharmaceutical expenditure increases the health, economy, and transport efficiency scores by 16.3%, 33%, and 58.6%, respectively.

The findings suggest that some of the economies were efficient with regard to their health-oriented outputs, that is, quality of life and mortality and morbidity rates, and most of the economies demonstrated excellent economic performance. The findings of the transport-oriented health efficiency assessment reveal that the economies were unable to perform well in the last year of the research period owing to the nationwide lockdowns. Nonetheless, they demonstrated efficiency in the first half of the research period. The joint assessment of economy- and transport-oriented health efficiency indicates that economic and transport input resources can adversely affect the GDP and life expectancy simultaneously, and the medical infrastructure, pharmaceutical expenditure, and number of medical graduates serve as constructive stimuli for health efficiency improvement.