Domain: Health Expenditure & Outcomes
Relationship between health spending and population health outcomes including life expectancy and mortality
Key Findings
- Health expenditure per capita is positively associated with life expectancy but with strongly diminishing returns above approximately $5000 PPP per capita (conditional, strong)
- Out-of-pocket health spending share is the strongest predictor of catastrophic health expenditure across 59 countries (positive, strong)
- Universal health coverage index is negatively associated with preventable mortality across 153 countries in panel analysis (negative, strong)
- Physician density is positively associated with health outcomes but with threshold effects plateauing around 3 physicians per 1,000 population (conditional, moderate)