Income Levels, Healthcare Spending, and Cancer Outcomes: A Cross-Country Econometric Analysis of 85 Countries

Abstract

This research is about the relationship between Income Level and cancer outcomes in developed and developing countries. It is hypothesized that the impacts of GDP per capita and health expenditure on cancer mortality would be different for developing and developed countries. It is predicted that developing countries have higher cancer mortality compared to developed countries. The independent variables are GDP per capita and current health expenditure per capita (current US$). And the dependent variable is the age-standardized cancer mortality-to-incidence ratio. The total number of samples is 85 countries; 28 are developed countries, and 57 are developing countries. It is used secondary sources to collect the data. The sources of data are the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank (WB). A multivariate regression model is used to analyze the data. The result shows that when the rate of GDP per capita increases by one unit, then the cancer mortality rate decreased by 0.27 units in the developed countries. That means increasing GDP per capita can able to reduce cancer mortality in the developed countries. But the current health expenditure per capita of the developed countries cannot contribute to decreasing their mortality rate. And in developing countries, when the rate of GDP per capita increases by one unit, then the cancer mortality rate also increases by 0.065 units. That means GDP per capita cannot significantly contribute to reducing cancer mortality. This is because GDP per capita in developing countries is higher enough as like developed nations, to reduce cancer mortality. But when the current health expenditure per capita increases by one unit in the developing countries, then the cancer mortality rate decreased by 0.16 unit. That means the current health expenditure per capita of the developing countries can contribute to decreasing their mortality rate. Based on the result, it is suggested that if the government can increase economic growth and increase health expenditure, then the rate of cancer mortality can be reduced in these developing countries.