Purpose: Health expenditures have a significant impact on the social and economic life of human societies and include an important share of the household basket. In recent years, the economic shocks that occurred in the country led to a change in household consumption patterns, especially in the area of health expenditures. Therefore, considering the importance of this sector in the development and economic growth of the country, it is necessary to examine the effects of these shocks on this sector. Therefore, the present study tries to investigate the effects of shocks of macroeconomic variables on household health expenditures in different provinces.
Method: The Bayesian Panel VAR model in Matlab software will be used to estimate data during the period 2001-2019 for all provinces of Iran.
Findings: The results showed that inflation shock, government spending shock, oil revenue shock and exchange rate shock have a positive and significant effect on household health expenditures in all provinces. Finally, the results of analysis of variance show that after 20 periods, except for the variable effect, the maximum and minimum impact of shocks on health expenditures for most provinces were inflation and exchange rates, respectively.
Conclusion: considering the positive impact of shocks on increasing household health expenditures and also the high importance of this variable in economic growth and development, it is necessary for the government and planners to have appropriate policies and programs to reduce the effects of these shocks and supporting vulnerable households, especially in recent years when these fluctuations have intensified.