Polity and health care expenditures: The association among 159 nations

This paper hypothesized that democratic nations, as characterized by Polity IV Project regime scores, spend more on health care than autocratic nations and that the association reported here is independent of other demographic, health system or economic characteristics of nations. WHO Global Observatory data on 159 nations with roughly 98% of the world’s population were examined. Regime scores had significant, direct and independent associations with each of four measures of health care expenditure. For every unit increment in a nation’s regime score toward a more democratic authority structure of governance, we estimated significant (p < 0.05) increments in the percent of GDP expended on health care (+0.14%), percent of general government expenditures targeted to health care (+0.25%), total per capita expenditures on health (+34.4 Int$) and per capita general government expenditures (+22.4 Int$), while controlling for a population’s age distribution, life expectancy, health care workforce and system effectiveness and gross national income. Moreover, these relationships were found to persist across socio-economic development levels. The finding that practices of health care expenditure and authority structures of government co-vary is instructive about the politics of health and the challenges of advancing global health objectives.