The Effect of Government Health Expenditures on Economic Growth in Countries of D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation

Providing healthcare services is one of the essential needs of a community that its shortcoming is considered as a state weaknesses causing widespread social discontent. Accordingly, this study was done to determine the impact of health expenditures on economic growth in D8 Organization for Economic Cooperation members. In this causal-analysis study, related data and statistics were extracted from WDI2013. Economic assessment was done through Eviews 6 software and using panel data over the period from 1995 to 2012 for D8 countries. According to the results, one-percent increase in each of the variables of government health expenditure and gross capital formation increases economic growth by 0.03 and 0.09 percent respectively. Also one-percent increase in the fertility rate decreases economic growth by 0.04 percent. Given the significant positive impact of government health expenditure on economic growth, it is recommended that policy makers of D8 members consider this type of expenditure as an investment not a cost and by appropriate policies give priority to funding for the health sector and take a step toward achieving economic growth.