The economic effects of health care systems on national economies: an input-output analysis of Slovenia

ABSTRACT

This paper estimates the size of the economic impact generated by the Slovenian health care sector on the national economy in the 2009–2014 period. The study separately calculates output, income, employment, value-added and import multipliers for the Slovenian health care sector based on input-output analysis covering 49 sectors. Initially, values of simple output multipliers for all years are estimated. When the re-circulation of final demand through households is added to the direct and indirect economic effects, the values of total output multipliers considerably exceeds 2. The results suggest that an additional million EUR of final demand in the health care sector will, based on different scenarios, increase the total employment by 20 to 30 units. Moreover, the type II employment multipliers imply that under the best-case scenario one employee in the health care sector creates an additional 0.7 unit of employment in remaining structures of the observed economy. Stability evaluation of the derived multipliers suggests that the domestic health care sector may reduce volatilities in production, income and employment and consequently act as an important shock absorber in the economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Health system
• input-output tables
• systems of national accounts
• multipliers
• Slovenia

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E61
• H51
• I10
• C67

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dr Aaron Reeves, Oxford University, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported through a collaborative agreement between the WHO European Office for Investment and Development, Venice Italy, the Ministry of Health of Slovenia and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health and Development, Murska Sobota, Slovenia.