Determinants of health spending: analysis for Bogotá, Medellín and Cali

Abstract

The objective of this article is to determine the variation of private health spending in the cities of Bogotá, Medellín and Cali and its relation with other habitual household expenses. A cross-sectional study was carried out with a sample of 130 households from the cities under study and a multiple regression model was implemented using OLS with a log-log functional form in the Stata software. It was observed that the expenses in food, electrical energy and recreation are the ones that determine health spending to a greater extent, basically due to the nature of this type of expenses and its close relationship with health care. It was concluded that the nature of food, electricity and recreation spending make them closely linked to health spending and have a considerable influence on the behavior of health private spending.

Tutor: Julio César Chamorro. Docente de Economía, Universidad Central.