Exploring the Roles of Renewable Energy, Education Spending, and CO2 Emissions towards Health Spending in South Asian Countries

Abstract

This research is mainly aimed at determining the effect of renewable energy (RE), education expenditures, and CO2 emissions on health expenditures in selected South Asian countries. There is an insufficient number of studies that investigate the linkages between health expenditures (HE) and CO2 emissions in South Asian countries. This study combined RE and gross domestic product (GDP) to identify their effect on health spending. We utilized the annual data of 1990–2018, and applied FMOLS and DOLS estimators over the panel data of five South Asian countries. According to the DOLS and FMOLS long-run results, GDP, RE, and education expenditures are negatively associated with health expenditures. This suggests that renewable energy puts less pressure on environmental quality, which leads to less health spending in the five South Asian countries studied. The empirical results also show that HE and CO2 emissions are positively and significantly related, which implies that an increase in CO2 emissions increases the financial burden on the various countries’ health sector. This study, therefore, recommends the usage of renewable sources to improve public health and to help lower health expenditures. To achieve sustainable development, it is also important to increase investment in the educational sector in the various countries. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.