Divergences of Health Expenditures and Role of the Government in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Selected Nations—An Investigation

The devastations of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic were experienced by different countries of the world with different degrees of severity due to their economic, socio-cultural, institutional, and political variations. In case of development of public health infrastructure, for providing health care facilities and government support measures (fiscal, monetary, trade and other related), there exist significant variations across countries. The present study attempts to examine the divergences in the expenditure of healthcare facilities (current health expenditure per capita in PPP and its two main determinants, viz., domestic general government health expenditure per capita, PPP and domestic private health expenditure per capita, PPP) in selected 14 low and high-income countries. The entire time period is divided into two sub-periods-(a) 2000–2019 (pre-Covid period) and (b) 2020–2021(shock period). We have used $$both\,the\,\beta\,and\,\sigma$$ convergence criteria. For $$\sigma$$ convergence we have applied the Generalized Entropy (GE) measures where three criteria are used—coefficient of variation, Theil’s measure and mean log deviation. Following Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1992), we have used the panel fixed effect model to check the $$\beta$$ convergence. The entire analysis is based on secondary time series data available from the Global Health Expenditure database, World Development Indicator (WDI), Global Health Expenditure Database (GHED, WHO), OECD Health Data set and IMF’s Database on Fiscal Measures. The study clearly points out that the trend of convergence is not confirmed if we include the Covid shock and more specifically, the heterogeneity in healthcare expenditure as well as the policy responses of the government increased during the COVID-19 pandemic shock.