Abstract
In the process of urbanization in developing countries, transportation infrastructure will be built and population migration will also occur. Although these actions can promote economic growth, they can also affect CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions will affect the health of residents, thereby changing health expenditures. The interaction of these three aspects is also a hot topic among scholars. The BRICS countries are emerging countries with the highest carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Discovering problems from empirical research is the focus of our research. This paper finds that, in the long-term, with CO2 emissions as the dependent variable and health expenditure and economic growth as the independent variables, there is a cointegration relationship between Brazil and China. In the short-term, there is a causal relationship between India’s CO2 emissions and health spending; other countries only show a one-way relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, medical spending, or economic growth. Our recommendations to the BRICS countries are as follows: (1) The BRICS countries should transform their economic development methods and use low-polluting alternative energy sources; (2) Brazil and India should pay attention to the indirect effects of economic growth and align economic growth policies with health expenditure policies. (3) South Africa should pay more attention to the sustainability of the impact of economic growth policies on health expenditures.JEL Classification: C22, E23, I18, O13,
The relationship between health expenditure, CO2 emissions, and economic growth in the BRICS countries—based on the Fourier ARDL model
