Air pollutants, economic growth and public health: implications for sustainable development in OECD countries
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Air pollutants, economic growth and public health: implications for sustainable development in OECD countries Ghulam Mujtaba 1,2 & Syed Jawad Hussain Shahzad 3,4 Received: 14 September 2020 / Accepted: 11 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The rapid economic growth over recent years and the resulting environmental pollution in OECD countries are a serious concern for the health of the general public. A comprehensive analysis of environmental pollutants, economic growth, and public health is done using data from 28 OECD economies from 2002 to 2018. Panel fully modified least squares and the panel vector error correction model are used. The results show that there is long-run causality from renewable energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to healthcare spending. Renewable energy and healthcare spending are positively and significantly related. It is concluded that investment in renewable energy leads to a reduction in air pollution, improvements in healthcare, and the promotion of economic growth. Keywords Air pollutants . OECD economies . Public health expenditure . Renewable energy
Introduction In the last few years, tremendous growth in the healthcare industry has been seen for various economic, noneconomic, and environmental reasons, which is a serious concern for health economists, policymakers, and researchers. There are two views regarding healthcare expense. One group of researchers (Azam et al. 2019) believe that healthcare expenditure is a luxury, like a commodity, so it is necessary to rely on market forces. Another group (Chaabouni and Saidi 2017; Ye and Zhang 2018; Wang et al. 2019) believe that healthcare expenditure is necessary, and the government should intervene. Although significant spending on healthcare is Responsible editor: Nicholas Apergis * Syed Jawad Hussain Shahzad [email protected] Ghulam Mujtaba [email protected] 1
School of Finance, Hubei University of Economics, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Management Science, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad, Pakistan
3
Montpellier Business School, Montpellier, France
4
South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia
necessary for economic development, excessive spending leads to an extra burden on government finances. Healthcare spending in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries has shown a tremendously increasing trend. OECD countries spend almost 85% of world spending on health, while the population of those countries is less than 20% of the world total (Blázquez-Fernández et al. 2019). OECD countries have the highest healthcare expenditure in the world. Figure 1 shows that, over time, healthcare expenditure increased gradually in OECD countries. In 2003 it was about 7.8% of gross domestic product (GDP), which increased to 8.8% in 2018, and is expected to reach 10.2% by 2030 (OECD 2019). One of the major challenges faced by the OECD is this continuous increase in healthcare expenses as a pe
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