The Effect of Health Care Industry on Industrial Structure: A Macro Evidence from Countries like OECD Members

Abstract

Under the background of being ill before becoming wealthy and healthy China, starting from industrial structure, this paper studies the effect of the development of health care industry on economic structure by using the panel data of more than one hundred countries from 1995 to 2011 from the World Bank Database and Penn World Table, to provide reference for the times demand for current economic structure transformation in China. Empirical results show as follows: firstly, the promotion of health care industry contributes to the increase in employment rate in services, and the coefficient of the effect of private health care investment on employment rate in services is bigger than the one of public health care investment; secondly, compared with public health care investment, the crowding-out effect of private health care investment on the secondary industry value added is more limited; thirdly, the development of health care services, especially public health cause, will accelerate the speed of economic structure transformation. In a word, the development of health care services is of active significance to the promotion of industrial structure transformation, but how to make a tradeoff between policy effects and possible resistance requires careful consideration by policy makers.