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Are Better Health Outcomes Related to Social Expenditure?

其他書名	A Cross-national Empirical Analysis of Social Expenditure and Population Health Measures
出版	RAND, 2016
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=erYOkAEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Previous studies have shown that social spending and the ratio of social to health spending are associated with better health outcomes in OECD countries. This exploratory study builds on this finding by widening the scope of the analysis, by incorporating other societal factors - namely, social capital and income inequality - and by assessing these relationships not only at the cross-national level but also at the cross-state level within the United States. The findings of the study are based on analyses of large longitudinal cross-national data sets on social spending, health outcomes and wider societal factors. The study confirmed earlier findings of a positive association between higher social spending and improved health outcomes, even when this is tested in many different ways. Public social expenditure by governments seems to have a particularly strong relationship with health outcomes. Disaggregating social spending by type of programme, some areas of social expenditure, such as old-age spending, appear more strongly positively related to better health outcomes than others. In addition, better health outcomes seem to be even more evident when the data are looked at over a longer time period from when the social expenditure occurs - perhaps because social expenditure can take time to translate into better health outcomes. Wider contextual factors also appear to matter. Countries with higher levels of trust in others tend to have both higher levels of social spending and better health outcomes. Also, higher inequality is associated with an even stronger association between social spending and health outcomes.