Abstract Bangladesh is facing a conundrum in figuring out how to improve public health while simultaneously reducing the environmental pollution. To alleviate the pressure from the high healthcare expenditure in Bangladesh, environmental management efforts to improve the quality of the environment need to be developed with the help of understanding the nexus between carbon emission, energy use, and health expenditure. In a society that is experiencing quick and difficult environmental problems due to rising energy demand, the current study focused on evaluating the effects of carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuel energy use, and renewable energy use on health expenditure in Bangladesh. Time series data were analyzed from the year 2000 to 2020 using the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares technique. The findings revealed that a 1% increase in carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel energy use will increase health expenditure by 0.95% and 2.67%, respectively. Furthermore, a 1% increase in renewable energy use may result in reduced health expenditure by 1.44% in the long run. This article provides policy recommendations to ensure environmental sustainability and healthcare facilities by lowering carbon emission in Bangladesh. This research would be helpful for designing a proactive health scheme to counteract the emerging health consequences of environmental pollution in Bangladesh. Graphical Abstract 

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The nexus between carbon emission, energy use, and health expenditure: empirical evidence from Bangladesh

Association between residential green cover and direct healthcare costs in Northern California: An individual level analysis of 5 million persons.

As evidence continues to mount that areas with more natural spaces also have healthier residents, researchers are beginning to suspect that these benefits extend beyond health to other related factors, such as healthcare spending. If more nature translates to better health, does more nature ultimately reduce the need for and spending on healthcare, and is this especially true for the elderly and disabled, who benefit differently from nature? This study aims to answer that question, employing a cross-sectional, ecological study design on county-level, annual per-capita Medicare spending in the United States. We examine the association between Medicare spending and the amount of total greenness in a county as well as the amount of blue space, or open water, in a county while controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and healthcare access confounders. Our results show a significant and inverse association between greenness and spending and mixed results in regard to blue spaces and spending. The greenness-spending association persists in varying levels of the urban–rural spectrum, including both the most and least urban counties.

Total area greenness is associated with lower per-capita medicare spending, but blue spaces are not

The environmental pollution caused by climate change and global warming pose significant risks to health. This raises the question how environmental disturbances can affect health expenditures. Based on this, this study examines the asymmetric effect of environmental quality on health expenditures in Türkiye using the non-linear ARDL (NARDL) model for the 1975–2019 period. In addition to environmental quality, natural resources, economic growth, and trade openness variables are also included in the health expenditure model. The findings support the existence of an asymmetric cointegration relationship between the series. The findings also indicate that positive environmental pollution shocks affect health expenditures positively in the long run, while negative environmental pollution shocks do not have a statistically significant effect on health expenditures. Positive and negative natural resource shocks affect health expenditures negatively in the long run. Despite the effect of positive economic growth shocks on health expenditures is positive but statistically insignificant, the effect of negative economic growth shocks is positive and significant. Besides, positive trade openness shocks have a negative effect on health expenditures and negative trade openness shocks have a positive effect. The findings prove that the steps to be taken to protect the environment in the current period will increase the effectiveness of health expenditures in the future. This situation has a guiding feature for policy-makers in terms of policy decisions. 

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Environmental quality and health expenditures efficiency in Türkiye: the role of natural resources

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Impact of Environmental Quality on Healthcare Expenditures in Developing Countries: A Panel Data Approach

The study probes the relationship between health expenditures, forestation, and environmental quality using panel data of 87 countries, through 1999–2018. The empirical analysis is based on 16 high-income, 22 upper-middle-income, 18 low-middle-income, 13 low-income, and 18 partner countries of one belt one road (OBOR) project. The Chinese government initiated one belt one road (OBOR) project to enhance the level of cooperation among partner countries in different sectors of an economy. The study incorporates a difference and system generalized method of moments (GMM) to control the problem of endogeneity. Empirical findings reveal the positive and significant relationship between CO2 emission and per capita health expenditure among the selected samples of all countries. However, forest area exhibits negative and significant association with per capita health expenditure in low-income and partner of one belt one road (OBOR) countries. The study incorporates different regression specification categories and amalgamation with different control variables such as per capita income, trade, and industrial value-added to ensure the robustness of estimates.

Ghulam Rasool Madni

Papers

Environmental quality, forestation, and health expenditure: a cross-country evidence