Impact of Health Expenditures and Health Resources on Health Status in the European Union Member States

Abstract

Health of population is not only valuable in and of itself, but contributes to economic growth and social inclusion and so health status monitoring is important for EU policies. The health status of the population cannot be captured by a single metric and it is determined by many factors inside and outside of the health systems. The aim of this article is quantification of causal relationships among health status, health expenditures and health care resources in the European Union Member States. Health status and its determinants are multidimensional categories that are specified by a number of selected indicators accessible from Eurostat, OECD or WHO databases. Multidimensional statistical methods namely rank correlation, factor analysis, cluster analysis and linear ordering of countries using synthetic variables will be used to achieve the goal of the article. The results of the analysis also reveal some of the causes of inequalities in health status in the EU Member States.