DETERMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELDERLY POPULATION AND HEALTH EXPENDITURES: PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

In recent years, as a result of demographic changes, there has been an increase in life expectancy at birth and, accordingly, in the number of elderly people. The distribution of age groups within the country's population provides information about the demographic structure of the country in question. For a healthy demographic structure, it is considered desirable for countries to have a high proportion of young people and a low proportion of elderly people. However, in recent years, the problem of increasing elderly population rate and its effects have started to be on the agenda of countries because this situation creates health expenditures, social expenditures and economic effects in countries. In this context, the aim of this study is to test the effect of the elderly population on health expenditures for the G-7/Turkey for the period 2000-2022 using panel data analysis. The findings show that the effect of the elderly population on health expenditures is positive and statistically significant. Different findings were obtained in country-based results.