The Impact Of Local Government Health Expenditure On Residents’ Health

Among the indicators of human welfare,health is the most closely index related to human existence,which is of great significance.National health is related to the accumulation of human capital and the speed and level of economic development.With the continuous development of China’s economy and the improvement of people’s living standard,the demand for health of the residents in our country is also increasing.At the same time,although the public health input in China continues to increase,the investment structure is continuously optimized,the proportion of local government health expenditure in the total health expenditure has been declining,highlights the "difficult and expensive" problem;from the beginning of 1990s,Chinese government led a series of reform of the Taxation system and the reform of health system,change the relationship between levels of government and the responsibility of financing in the health sector,in this context,to explore the government public health expenditure,fiscal decentralization of the health level of residents of the influence mechanism,to further deepen the reform of the financial system,establishing reasonable public health expenditure policy,promote the health level of residents to improve has a strong practical significance.This paper using the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2005 to 2014,establish Chinese macro health production function based on Grossman health demand theory,the introduction of government health expenditure,fiscal decentralization index and its interaction terms are explained in the consideration of the basic variables lag and explain part of endogenous variables,using the first-order differential GMM estimation method to study the specific impact of the above indicators,the health level of residents.The results show that the health level of a lag period have a significant positive effect on the health of residents,the health level of growth has strong inertia time,at the same time,the local government health expenditure per capita increases every 1%,mortality rate is expected to drop by 0.147%,which is expected to increase the health level of 0.147%.At the same time,fiscal decentralization to some extent will weaken the local government public health expenditure of health production efficiency,fiscal decentralization index increased by 1%each,residents’ health level is expected to increase by 0.182%.At the same time,this paper also divides the 30 provinces and cities of China into three regions:East,Central and West,and makes further comparative analysis,the results show that the two regions of Central and Western China are basically consistent with the national level,while there are some differences between the eastern region and the central and Western Regions.Further,this paper continue to classify health expenditure by the local government to investigate the influence of different functions,the different aspects of the health expenditure compensation results show that the expenditure of"demand side" in government expenditure on health care:medical insurance expenditure,shows positive influence on the health level of residents,and The"supply side":the expenditure of medical and health services has opposite conclusion.The empirical results provide important information for policy reference for a new round of medical reform:While expanding the scale of local government health expenditure,we should also consider improving the current fiscal decentralization system,and strengthening the assessment of the local government’s medical and health services.