Decomposição da variação da produção dos setores de saúde: o caso do Brasil e dos Estados Unidos

Abstract

Health Economics got greater attention from economic policy makers after the Second World War. Health or lack of health is a macroeconomic variable that shows the level of economic development in a region. The health would affect the quality of human capital and the incentive / disincentive the investment flows (PIOLA et al., 2002). By being directly associated with the life from the individual point of view, there is no satiety for goods and services of Health (ANDRADE, 2000). In this context, this paper carried out the decomposition of the variation of production in the health sectors into two effects: a) a technological change (technical coefficients) and b) change in final demand for the years 2000 and 2005 in the Brazilian case and 1997 and 2002 for the USA. The primary goal of this decomposition was to investigate in detail the structure of the productive sectors related to health included in this dissertation and their interdependencies with other sectors of the economy and the components of final demand. Results of Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) show that the Brazilian economy has a strong component of growth influenced by the final demand. This pattern is maintained for the areas related to Health. In relation to the technological performance of Brazilian economy, it became clear that there are significant technological differences among the sectors. With regard to the sectors of Health, the sectors that stood out with an increase in technological dynamism were additional medical care and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. The other sectors related to health, in general, have the same technological trajectory, and "dominated by suppliers" and "pushed by demand." The results of the SDA held for the U.S. economy showed that the variation of GDP, between 1997 and 2002 was strongly influenced by the final demand component. Refining the analysis for the sectors related to health, the results for the technological component are relatively stable for the sectors of health services in this period. With regard to industrial sectors of Health, there was significant loss of technological dynamism. By comparing the variation of the technology component in the periods of analysis between the U.S. and Brazil, we find that sectors related to health remained stable in relation to technological change, except for the sector of Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals in which, in terms of technological component, significant progress was observed in Brazil and negative change in the U.S. Analyzing the technological component disaggregated, there is, again, a divergent pattern: for the Brazilian case we note a technological effort that comes from the public sector while in the U.S. case, there is a technological efforts that is due to the private sector. The Production of Medical Instruments has loss of technological dynamism in both countries. The sectors of health services remained relatively constant in terms of technological change, in both economies in the periods considered. With regard to final demand, it was found strong influence of the final demand component in determining the final product growth in the Brazilians and Americans Health sector.