[EQ] Health Status Determinants: Lifestyle, Environment, Health Care Resources and Efficiency

Health Status Determinants: Lifestyle, Environment, Health Care Resources and Efficiency

 

Isabelle Joumard, Christophe André, Chantal Nicq and Olivier Chatal

ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT WORKING PAPERS No. 627

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 04-Aug-2008

 

Available online as PDF file [74p.] at:

http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2008doc.nsf/ENGDATCORPLOOK/NT0000363E/$FILE/JT03249407.PDF

“….This paper aims to shed light on the contribution of health care and other determinants to the health status of the population and to provide evidence on whether or not health care resources are producing similar value for money across OECD countries.

·         First, it discusses the pros and cons of various indicators of the health status, concluding that mortality and longevity indicators have some drawbacks but remainthe best available proxies.

·         Second, it suggests that changes in health care spending, lifestyle factors (smoking and alcohol consumption as well as diet), education, pollution and income have been important factors behind improvements in health status.

·         Third, it derives estimates of countries’ relative performance in transforming health care resources into longevity from two different methods – panel data regressionsand data envelopment analysis – which give remarkably consistent results.

The empirical estimates suggest that potential efficiency gains might be large enough to raise life expectancy at birth by almost three years on average for OECD countries, while a 10% increase in total health spending would increase life expectancy by three to four months…..”

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction and main findings

2. Measuring health care outcomes

The average health status of the population can be proxied by various indicators

Information on equity in population health status is critically missing

3. Determinants of health status: literature review, model specification and empirical results

Most previous analyses have adopted a production-function approach

…with broad consensus on the inputs potentially contributing to population health status

Specification and empirical results

4. Health care resources are not producing the same “value for money” across countries

Panel data regressions provide some indication of the relative performance of individual countries

Panel data results and DEA efficiency scores are broadly consistent

Overall findings and implications for future research

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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