Investigating the effect of population aging on health costs with a general population policy approach

Over the past few decades, Iran has experienced rapid demographic changes, including a sharp decline in the birth rate and an increase in life expectancy, which has led to an increase in the percentage of the elderly. One of the major challenges of the aging population is increasing the health expenditure of communities. This study, considering the general demographic policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran to promote the dynamism, maturity, and youth of the population by increasing the fertility rate to more than the replacement level, seeks to investigate the effect of population aging on the share of health expenditures in GDP. This research has been done using the data of the Statistics Center of Iran for the period 1360-1389. First, a model for the share of health expenditures in GDP was presented; Then its coefficients were estimated using the self-explanatory wide-interval model. Also, to evaluate the speed of adjustment of the short-term model to the long-term model, the error correction model was estimated. The results showed that the increase in the elderly population, in the long run, leads to a rise in health expenditures, so that a one percent increase in the aging index leads to 0.37 Percentage increase in the health expenditures. Also, in the long run, the growth of GDP per capita variables, price index in the health sector, and urbanization have a positive and significant effect on the share of health expenditures in GDP. The error correction factor was 46%.