Estimating the Health Services Demand Function, based on the Population Age Pyramid

Population aging is one of the factors that increase the need and consequently the demand for health care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the demand function for health services in different age groups.

This study was a panel data type that estimated the demand function of outpatient health services using the population age pyramid of the country during the period of 2006-2011. In order to estimate this model, age groups were considered as the explanatory variable and the number of outpatient visits to health centers was considered as the dependent variable. Information on these variables for all provinces of the country was collected from the Iranian Statistics Center. Data analysis was performed using Eviews software version 7 and Stata version 11 software.

There was a significant relationship between demand for health services and age groups of 59-40 years (P= 0.05) and over 60 years (P= 0.04). In the age group of 40-59 years, there was an increase of almost 5% in the number of visits to medical centers, while in the age group of over 60 years the increase in demand was 0.19%.

As population aging is a foreseen and unavoidable phenomenon of the future of our country, identifying the health needs of the elderly and providing therapeutic methods that meet the needs of this population, while considering the limited resources are necessary.