Interrelation between economic development and health development: Implication for Iraq

Abstract

This thesis concerned with interrelationship between Economic Development and Health Development as implications for Iraq. Iraq has a history of indulging in three wars and international sanctions during three decades which created very serious economic and environmental problems. As a sequence of such declinations most of health indicators had been declined during that era. The objectives of this study is by using Middle East and Arabic countries indicators as an implication for Iraq to explore the interaction between the health indicators and economic indicators, analyze the socioeconomic factors which have the greater impact on health status and examine the health status in response to socioeconomic factors determined in the study. Regression analysis using data of 24 Middle East and Arabic countries during 1997-2004. In order to investigate the interaction between Economic Development and Health Development, we developed a model using data for 8 years across 24Middle East and Arabic countries. Using simultaneous equations with two health indicators; the first indicator is under 5 mortality rate and the second indicator is life expectancy using three equations to each health indicators. The result of this study indicated that the education has a positive effect on life expectancy and a negative effect on under 5 mortality. The effect of gross domestic product on life expectancy positively significant and negatively not significant on under 5 mortality rate. The under 5 mortality rate has negative significant effect on gross domestic product while the effect of the life expectancy is not significant. Capital and labor showed positive significant relation with gross domestic product in both health indicators. The factors found significant impact on dependency ratio are gross domestic product, health status and geographical factors. The most important socioeconomic factors are education (gross enrollment ratio) that effect on health. For Iraq, it appears that the model is suitable for Iraq. Forecasting for next 5 years, it appears that if government works to increase health expenditure, gross enrolment ratio and find way to financed health system the health status of Iraqi people can improve successfully.