Impact of Economic Growth, Environmental Pollution, and Energy Consumption on Health Expenditure and R&amp;D Expenditure of ASEAN Countries

Haseeb Haseeb,Kot Kot,Jermsittiparsert Jermsittiparsert,Hussain Hussain

doi:10.3390/en12193598

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to examine the determinants of R&D expenditure and health expenditure of ASEAN countries. The research objectives were developed to analyze the short-term as well as the long-term impact of economic growth, environmental pollution, and energy consumption on health and R&D expenditures. The data was collected for ten years for ASEAN countries using the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, which helped the researcher to assess long-run as well as the short-run association of these variables. The findings revealed that environmental pollution, energy consumption, and economic growth had a significant positive impact on health expenditure as well as on R&D expenditure of ASEAN countries in long-run. The findings further revealed that environmental pollution and economic growth had a significant impact on R&D expenditure in short-run; however, there was no significant impact of energy consumption on R&D expenditure in short-run. It was also found that there was no significant impact of any of the independent variables, i.e., energy consumption, economic growth, and environmental pollution, on health expenditure in short-run. The current study and findings have significant implications in theory and practice.

Highlights

The critical debate has started on the correlation between health expenditure, environmental condition, and economic growth relationship with the increase in countries’ concerns related to health and pollution
The findings revealed that economic growth had a positive and significant impact in long-run estimations on health and R&D estimations, whereas it had a significant effect on R&D in short-term but insignificant on health expenditure
The current study examined the linkage of economic growth, environmental pollution, energy consumption, health expenditure, and R&D expenditure for which the data were collected for the past ten years for ASEAN countries

Summary

Introduction

The critical debate has started on the correlation between health expenditure, environmental condition, and economic growth relationship with the increase in countries’ concerns related to health and pollution. In this regard, previous studies suggest a strong association between health expenditure, energy, R&D, environmental pollution, and GDP of a country. The increasing rate of globalization, urbanization, industrialization, and energy consumptions in ASEAN region has further led these countries to focus on their health and R&D conditions that are being largely influenced due to environmental pollution and energy consumption [5,6,7]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion