The roles of economic growth and health expenditure on CO(2) emissions in selected Asian countries: a quantile regression model approach

Continuous economic growth and the rise in energy consumption are linked with environmental pollution. Demand for health care expenditure increased after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is interesting in modeling the nexus between public and private health expenditure, carbon dioxide emissions, and economic growth. To this end, the present study analyzed the nexus between public and private health care expenditure, economic growth, and environmental pollution for 36 Asian countries for the period 1991–2017. FMOLS, GMM, and quantile regression analysis confirm the EKC hypothesis in Asia. Besides, FMOLS and quantile regressions reached the reducing effects of government and private health expenditures on CO(2) emissions. While quantile regression results show that public and private health expenditures can mitigate CO(2) emissions; however, these results differ for various levels of CO(2). Findings of quantile regression show a significant impact of both public and private health expenditures in reducing CO(2) at the 50(th) and 75(th) quantiles but results are insignificant for the 25(th) quantile. Overall, the paper concludes that both government and private health sectors’ expenditures caused CO(2) emissions to decrease in Asia and that the negative impact of the private health sector on CO(2) emissions is greater than that of the government health sector. The concluding remark is that the higher the health spending, the higher the environmental quality will be in Asia. Hence, the health administrators need to increase public and private health expenditures with an effective cost-service and energy-efficient management approach to reach sustainable health services and a sustainable environment in Asia. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-021-13639-6.