Does environment quality affect the health care spending? Nexus among CO2 emissions, non-renewable energy production, financial development, and health care spending.

Abstract

This study investigates the dynamic associations among carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, non-renewable energy production from petroleum derivatives, financial development, and healthcare expenditures to improve environmental quality. This research has employed the balanced annual panel of thirty (30) Organizations for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries' data set and applied panel vector autoregression (VAR) method depending on the generalized method of moments (GMM). Furthermore, the empirical findings reveal that health spending and CO2 emissions have a favorable bidirectional link, but there is no indication that health spending promotes power generation. The results demonstrate that increased energy consumption and productions affect pollution, and higher CO2 emissions increase healthcare costs. Whereas, energy consumption, financial development, and healthcare expenditures have a positive toward environmental quality.