Determinants of Public Health Personnel Spending in Spain

Abstract

Public health is funded with government funds gathered from tax revenues, whether national, provincial or municipal. The health system therefore suffers during economic crisis periods, whether due to disinvestment, loss of purchasing power among health care personnel or the decrease in the number of professionals. This worsens the situation, as it is necessary to cover the needs of an increasingly elderly population and with a longer life expectancy at birth. The present study intends to show a model which explains the determination of the “Public Health Personnel Expenditure” in Spain for a determined period. A multiple linear regression model was applied to the period including the years 1980–2021. Macroeconomic and demographic variables were analyzed to explain the dependent variable. Variation in health personnel expenditure: “We included those variables which presented a high or very high correlation above r > 0.6. The variables which explain the behavior of Variation in health personnel expenditure”. It was a determining factor in the present study to consider that the variables with the greatest repercussions on health policy were mainly macroeconomic variables rather than demographic variables, with the only significant demographic variable that had a specific weight lower than macroeconomic variables being “Birth Rate”. In this sense, the contribution made to the scientific literature is to establish an explanatory model so that public policy managers and states in particular can consider it in their public spending policies, bearing in mind that health expenditures in a Beveridge-style health system, as Spain has, are paid with funds drawn from tax revenues.