IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v7y2010i8p3235-3254d9335.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aging Risk and Health Care Expenditure in Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Byongho Tchoe

    (Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, Seocho-gu, Seocho-3 dong, Seoul 137-927, Korea)

  • Sang-Ho Nam

    (Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, Eunpyong-gu, Bulkwang-dong, Seoul 122-705, Korea)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of population aging on health care expenditures in Korea. Examination of the age-expenditure profile reveals that health care resources are allocated more for the older cohort of population over time, suggesting significant growth of health care expenditures due to population aging. We contend, however, that population aging is considered as a parameter rather than an independent variable to explain rising health care expenditures. This paper shows that population aging is not found to be a significant determinant of health care expenditures according to the econometric analysis using OECD health data and time-series data for Korea. Using the components decomposition method, which measures the contribution of each component of health care expenditure, we estimate that population aging contributes only less than 10 percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Byongho Tchoe & Sang-Ho Nam, 2010. "Aging Risk and Health Care Expenditure in Korea," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 7(8), pages 1-20, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:7:y:2010:i:8:p:3235-3254:d:9335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/8/3235/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/8/3235/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andreas Werblow & Stefan Felder & Peter Zweifel, 2007. "Population ageing and health care expenditure: a school of 'red herrings'?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(10), pages 1109-1126.
    2. Pedro Pita Barros, 1998. "The black box of health care expenditure growth determinants," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(6), pages 533-544, September.
    3. Victor R. Fuchs, 2018. "“Though Much Is Taken”: Reflections on Aging, Health, and Medical Care," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Health Economics and Policy Selected Writings by Victor Fuchs, chapter 33, pages 403-424, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Seshamani, Meena & Gray, Alastair M., 2004. "A longitudinal study of the effects of age and time to death on hospital costs," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 217-235, March.
    5. Sally C. Stearns & Edward C. Norton, 2004. "Time to include time to death? The future of health care expenditure predictions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(4), pages 315-327, April.
    6. Andreas Werblow & Stefan Felder & Peter Zweifel, 2007. "Population ageing and health care expenditure: a school of ‘red herrings’?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(10), pages 1109-1126, October.
    7. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1977. "Medical-Care Expenditure: A Cross-National Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 12(1), pages 115-125.
    8. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Jonsson, Bengt, 1992. "International comparisons of health care expenditure -- conversion factor instability, heteroscedasticity, outliers and robust estimators," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 189-197, August.
    9. Hitiris, Theo & Posnett, John, 1992. "The determinants and effects of health expenditure in developed countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 173-181, August.
    10. Peter Zweifel & Stefan Felder & Markus Meiers, 1999. "Ageing of population and health care expenditure: a red herring?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(6), pages 485-496, September.
    11. Barer, Morris L. & Evans, Robert G. & Hertzman, Clyde & Lomas, Jonathan, 1987. "Aging and health care utilization: New evidence on old fallacies," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 24(10), pages 851-862, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adeel Saleem & Ghulam Sarwar & Jahanzaib Sultan & Zulfiqar Ali, 2022. "Determinants of Public Healthcare Investment: Cointegration and Causality Evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Economic Impact, Science Impact Publishers, vol. 4(2), pages 01-13.
    2. Minsung Sohn & Xianhua Che & Sungwon Lim & Hee-Jung Park, 2020. "Estimating Lifetime Dental Care Expenditure in South Korea: An Abridged Life Table Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-11, May.
    3. Ke Chen & Alan Hoi-shou Chan, 2013. "Use or Non-Use of Gerontechnology—A Qualitative Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-22, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7972 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Fabio Pammolli & Francesco Porcelli & Francesco Vidoli & Monica Auteri & Guido Borà, 2017. "La spesa sanitaria delle Regioni in Italia - Saniregio2017," Working Papers CERM 01-2017, Competitività, Regole, Mercati (CERM).
    3. Friedrich Breyer & Normann Lorenz, 2021. "The “red herring” after 20 years: ageing and health care expenditures," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(5), pages 661-667, July.
    4. Caravaggio, Nicola & Resce, Giuliano, 2023. "Enhancing Healthcare Cost Forecasting: A Machine Learning Model for Resource Allocation in Heterogeneous Regions," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp23090, University of Molise, Department of Economics.
    5. Ried, Walter, 2007. "On the relationship between aging, edical progress and age-specific health care expenditures," Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Diskussionspapiere 08/2007, University of Greifswald, Faculty of Law and Economics.
    6. Breyer Friedrich, 2015. "Demographischer Wandel und Gesundheitsausgaben: Theorie, Empirie und Politikimplikationen," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 16(3), pages 215-230, October.
    7. Anna Kollerup & Jakob Kjellberg & Rikke Ibsen, 2022. "Ageing and health care expenditures: the importance of age per se, steepening of the individual-level expenditure curve, and the role of morbidity," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 23(7), pages 1121-1149, September.
    8. Friedrich Breyer & Normann Lorenz & Thomas Niebel, 2015. "Health care expenditures and longevity: is there a Eubie Blake effect?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(1), pages 95-112, January.
    9. Vincenzo Atella & Valentina Conti, 2013. "The effect of age and time to death on health care expenditures: the Italian experience," CEIS Research Paper 267, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 12 Nov 2013.
    10. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225.
    11. Hartwig, Jochen, 2008. "What drives health care expenditure?--Baumol's model of 'unbalanced growth' revisited," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 603-623, May.
    12. Keegan, Conor & Brick, Aoife & Bergin, Adele & Wren, Maev-Ann & Whyte, Richard & Henry, Edward, 2020. "Projections of expenditure for public hospitals in Ireland, 2018–2035, based on the Hippocrates Model," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS117.
    13. Fredrik Gregersen, 2014. "The impact of ageing on health care expenditures: a study of steepening," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 15(9), pages 979-989, December.
    14. Murphy, Michael & Martikainen, Pekka, 2013. "Use of hospital and long-term institutional care services in relation to proximity to death among older people in Finland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 39-47.
    15. Melberg, Hans Olav & Sørensen, Jan, 2013. "How does end of life costs and increases in life expectancy affect projections of future hospital spending?," HERO Online Working Paper Series 2013:9, University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme.
    16. Rolden, Herbert J.A. & van Bodegom, David & Westendorp, Rudi G.J., 2014. "Variation in the costs of dying and the role of different health services, socio-demographic characteristics, and preceding health care expenses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 110-117.
    17. Stefan Felder & Peter Zweifel & Andreas Werblow, 2006. "Population Ageing and Health Care Expenditure: Is Long-term Care Different?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 142(V), pages 43-48.
    18. Stefan Felder, 2013. "The Impact of Demographic Change on Healthcare Expenditure," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(1), pages 03-06, 04.
    19. Silvia Balia & Rinaldo Brau, 2014. "A Country For Old Men? Long‐Term Home Care Utilization In Europe," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(10), pages 1185-1212, October.
    20. Atella, Vincenzo & Conti, Valentina, 2014. "The effect of age and time to death on primary care costs: The Italian experience," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 10-17.
    21. Colombier, Carsten & Weber, Werner, 2009. "Projecting health-care expenditure for Switzerland: further evidence against the 'red-herring' hypothesis," MPRA Paper 26747, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Nov 2009.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:7:y:2010:i:8:p:3235-3254:d:9335. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.