A Study on Health Variables of the BRICS Countries: From Period 2000 to 2019

Earlier studies have examined the link between government health expenditure (GHE) and economic growth using panel unit root and panel co-integration and Generalized Methods of Moments GMM in BRICS countries, yet whether the long-run impact of healthcare spending to accelerate economic growth still demands more attention and in-depth analysis.

The current study examined the effective drivers of BRICS countries' healthcare systems and investigated how health indicators affect BRICS countries' gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita income. It is important to examine how healthcare variables affect BRICS nations' health spending priorities in the short and long term.

The healthcare indicators, such as Current Health Expenditure (CHE), GHE, Crude Birth Rate, Immunization, Infant Mortality Rate, Inflation Consumer prices annual percentage, Life Expectancy at Birth, out-of-pocket expenses, Population Growth, and Total Fertility Rate were considered for the analysis. The study used Panel Data analysis with Fixed Effect and Random Effect Model for the BRICS countries from 2000 to 2019.

The results highlight that GDP and per capita income negatively affect variable CHE. It suggests that GHE positively relates with GDP and per capita income. The results reflect that higher government health spending leads to higher real GDP and per capita income.

The study highlighted that the BRICS countries' healthcare systems are best protected by investing in infrastructure, hospitals, and vaccination.