Aging Risk and Health Care Expenditure in Korea (original) (raw)
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The Real Effect of Aging Population on Health Expenditures in OECD Countries
Korea and World Economy, 2022
Background: Most studies in the 1980s and 1990s conclude that population aging is not a major cause of health spending. Advanced countries have been attracting attention as them with the extension of life expectancy, coupled with low income growth but increasing health expenditures in the last 20 years. Whether population aging contributes to health care spending is still an issue that needs to be reexamined. Methods: We verify the determinants of health expenditures for 24 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries during 1970-2016. To do this, we conducted the three-stage least squares (3SLS) panel regression method to alleviate the endogenous relationship among healthcare expenditures, income, and population aging. The results were compared with those derived by the panel regression method. Results: The results for 24 OECD countries show that population aging turned to be negative in the 3SLS analysis, but insignificant in the panel regression. Income was a strongly positive driver (income elasticity=1.74) on 3SLS, and a rather positive (income elasticity=0.58) on panel analysis. Conclusion: Age did not significantly affect health expenditures in the advanced countries. The reality is that the income thought to cause population aging contributes to higher health expenditure, although advanced countries have experienced decades of sluggish economy.
Aging and Future Healthcare Expenditure: A Consistent Approach
Forum for Health Economics & Policy, 2000
The impact of aging on healthcare expenditure (HCE) has been at the center of a prolonged debate. This paper purports to shed light on several issues of this debate by presenting new evidence on the "red herring" hypothesis advanced by Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999). This hypothesis amounts to distinguishing a mortality from a morbidity component in healthcare expenditure (HCE) and claiming that failure to make this distinction results in excessive estimates of future growth of HCE. A re-estimation based on a much larger data set is performed, using the refined econometric methodology. The main contribution is consistency, however. Rather than treating the mortality component as a residual in forecasting, its dynamics are analyzed in the same detail as that of the morbidity component when predicting the impact of population aging on the future growth of HCE. For the case of Switzerland, it finds this impact to be relatively small regardless of whether or not the mortalit...
Health Policy, 2011
Objectives: The compositions of health expenditures by households in South Korea with and without catastrophic health expenditures were compared. Also, relationships between catastrophic health expenditures and household incomes, and between such health expenditures and expenditure patterns were explored. Methods: Data from the 2006 South Korean Household Income & Expenditure Survey, a representative survey of 90,696 households were analyzed. We used a double-hurdle model to assess each income source and expenditure category. The independent variable was the presence of catastrophic health expenditure. Results: After adjusting for household characteristics, the results showed that earned, business, and property incomes were significantly lower, but transfer and loan incomes were significantly higher in households with catastrophic health expenditures than in those without such health expenditures. All consumption categories, other than health expenditure, were significantly lower in households with catastrophic health expenditures than in those without catastrophic health expenditures. This suggests that households with catastrophic health expenditures faced challenges in offset by the potentially excessive health expenditure and may have been obliged to reduce consumption of other items. Conclusions: The expansion of insurance coverage and lowering of out-of-pocket rates in the South Korean Health Insurance benefits could be a necessary first step in protecting households from the occurrence of health related economic catastrophes.
WHAT ARE THE DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURE? EMPIRICAL RESULTS FROM ASIAN COUNTRIES
This paper uses panel data to identify the determinants of health care expenditure in twelve Asian countries (i.e. and Vietnam) for the period of 1995-2008. The empirical results indicated that only two independent variables (GDPit and POP65it) have significant relationship with health care expenditure in these countries. These two variables are positively correlated with the amount of health care expenditure. In other words, when the countries' income is larger, the amount of health care expenditure is larger. When the share of ageing population in the total population is higher, again the amount of health care expenditure is larger.
The Impact of Aging on Future Healthcare Expenditure
2006
The impact of aging on healthcare expenditure (HCE) has been at the center of a prolonged debate. This paper purports to shed light on several issues. First, it presents new evidence on the relative importance of the two components of HCE that have been distinguished by Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999), viz. the cost of morbidity and the cost of mortality (their "red herring" hypothesis claims that neglecting the mortality component results in excessive estimates of future growth of HCE). Second, it takes account of recent evidence suggesting that HCE does increase life expectancy, implying that time-to-death is an endogenous determinant of HCE. Third, it investigates the contribution of population aging to the future growth of HCE. For the case of Switzerland, it finds this contribution to be relatively small regardless of whether or not the cost of dying is accounted for, thus qualifying the "red herring" hypothesis.
Does Morbidity among Elderly Increase Household Health Care Expenditure
The study examines the effect of population ageing on health expenditure at the household and individual levels utilising NSS 6(/h Round data. It found that one quarter of the elderly reported their health as poor and the proportion increased with increase in age. Disease prevalence among elderly was high. It was more than 40 per cent and it increased with age so that per capita hospitalization cost for the elderly is four times higher than for others. The skewness in health expenditure towards the elderly tends to diminish when we adjust the aged population for their higher risk of getting diseases. Presence of elderly in the household augments per capita hospitalisation cost for the household.