Borrowing for health, sustainability, credit card use and ownership: a study of 74 countries

Abstract

With the rising cost of healthcare, most households are resorting to out-of-pocket financing or borrowing to finance the high cost of health care. Intuitively, healthcare's rising cost is a global concern and is subject to a thorough economic debate. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 focuses on health care financing for all ages to promote everyone's healthy lifestyle. There are two objectives of this study, and these are as follows: (1) Examine the relationship between borrowing for health or medical purposes and credit card use and ownership, and (2) Explore the significant gender differences concerning borrowing for health or medical purposes. Data for this study was collected from the Global Findex Database and analyzed using the Eviews8 and Microsoft Excel software. The findings from this study confirmed that borrowing for health or medical purposes, primary education, or less (% age 15+) has a statistically significant impact on credit card ownership and usage in high-income countries. There was no relationship of this nature evident in the case of low-income countries. There are significant differences between borrowing for health or medical reasons between males and females in Austria and Lithuania. Both Austria and Lithuania are high-income countries, but in the case of low-income countries, significant gender differences were found for Madagascar and Nepal. This study is timely and has contributed immensely to the existing literature.