Examining the Effects of Governance on Health in Iran Using Bounds Testing Approach

Based on the World Health Organization (WHO), the efficiency of the government health system plays a vital role in improving the citizens’ quality of life. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between political stability and corruption within the health system. The (ARDL or Autoregressive Distributed Lag) bounds testing approach was used in this study. The data of this study was collected from the second season of 1997 to the fourth season of 2018 once in every season and were analyzed into two groups. In the first group, infant mortality, mortality of children aged under 5, and life expectancy are dependent variables, and gross domestic product (GDP), immorality, and health care expenses are independent variables, and in the second group, the explanatory variable, namely political stability, were added as independent variables. According to the long-term results, in the first group, GDP and government health expending have a negative impact on children and infant mortality; moreover, GDP, government health expenditures, and political stability have a negative impact and corruption has a positive impact on children and infants' mortality in the second group respectively. The effects of all four variables on life expectancy were negative, which can be justified by the indicators of sustainable development and the environment. Therefore, more attention is needed by planners to allocate resources along with the leverage of corruption control and strive for political-economic stability that undermines long-term growth and prosperity.