The efficiency of provincial government health care expenditure after China’s new health care reform

ABSTRACT

By drawing on the panel data of health care inputs and outputs from 31China’s provinces in the period 2004–2020, we apply the Malmquist DEA model to measure the TFP, TC (Technology change), EC (Efficiency change), PEC (Pure efficiency change or pure technical efficiency change) and SEC (Scale efficiency change) of the provincialgovernment’s health care expenditure. We find that the average TFP of China’s 31 provincial health care expenditure was lower than 1. We note this applies irrespective of the implementation of NHCR (New Health Care Reform), and also observe the average TFP was much higher after NHCR was implemented.

KEYWORDS:

• Malmquist data envelopment analysis
• total factor productivity
• health care
• government health care expenditure

Data availability statement

All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the submitted article https://data.stats.gov.cn/english/easyquery.htm?cn=C01andhttps://www.gtarsc.com/.

Ethical statement

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. I certify that this manuscript is original and has not been published and will not be submitted elsewhere for publication . And the study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuwei Du

Yuwei Du is a postdoctor fellow at the School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. from the College of Business Administration at Gyeongsang National University. Her main research interests are accounting, carbon neutrality, and macroeconomics.

Yaojun Fan

Fan Yaojun,  is a researcher specialising in green finance and corporate finance management. He is currently teaching in the undergraduate finance program at Dhurakij Pundit University, where he teaches business research methods and investment science.

Xiang Hu

Xiang Hu is a PhD candidate in economics at Renmin University, with research interests in macroeconomics and health economics.