How Healthcare Expenditures Affect COVID-19 Fatality Rate Across European Countries?

The goal of this study is to examine the relationship between healthcare expenditures and health capacity, and variability in COVID-19 case fatality rate between European countries. In particular, the purpose of the present study is to see whether statistical evidence supports the hypothesis that the reduction of COVID-19 fatality, between European countries, can be explained by leveraging health expenditures and if so to form some quantitative analyses and estimates of the relation between health expenditures and COVID-19 fatality rate between countries. The research is based on a sample of European countries and data from various sources, including Eurostat, World Bank, and OECD databases. Results suggest that countries with higher COVID-19 fatality rate in 2020 (when pandemic starts) in comparison to countries with lower COVID-19 fatality had (higher) +50.5% of fatality in 2020, +52.9% in 2022, lower health expenditure as % of GDP -5.5%, health expenditure per capita -34.5%, R&D expenditures in health -30.3%, lower reduction of COVID-19 fatality from 2022-2022 by -57.2 % vs 59.3% of the other group. Results also show a negative association between COVID-19 Fatality in 2022 and Health expenditure as a share of GDP 2020 (r=-0.42, p-value 0.05); COVID-19 Fatality in 2022 and Vaccinations in December 2021 (r=-0.75, p-value 0.01). Difference of COVID-19 Fatality 22-20 has also negative correlation coefficients given by r=-0.48 (p-value 0.05) with Health expenditure as a share of GDP of 2020 and by r=-0.52 (p-value 0.01) with vaccinations in December 2021. Partial correlation, controlling population over 65yo in 2020, confirms previous results. The contribution here expands the knowledge in these research topics by endeavoring to clarify how higher health expenditures improve the preparedness and resilience in crisis management of countries to face unforeseen epidemic or pandemic similar to COVID-19 in society.