Analysis of Health Expenditure and Life Insurance Density in OECD Countries

The study analyzes the relationship between life insurance density and the share of health expenditure in GDP for a sample of 22 OECD member countries, for the period 2013–2022. The research starts from the idea that the development of the life insurance market is influenced not only by classical macroeconomic factors, but also by variables that reflect the level of social and institutional development. The empirical analysis uses panel data, with life insurance density as the dependent variable, and the share of government health expenditure in GDP, employment rate, inflation rate and human development index as explanatory variables. In order to identify the most appropriate econometric specification, the Pooled OLS, Fixed Effects Model and Random Effects Model models were compared, based on the Breusch–Pagan, Wald and Hausman tests. The results obtained highlight that the share of health expenditure in GDP has a positive and statistically significant influence on the density of life insurance, the estimated coefficient being 0.251843, at a probability of 0.0000. At the same time, the employment rate has a negative and also statistically significant effect, in the fact that the inflation rate is not significant at the 5% threshold, and the human development index has a positive, borderline significant influence. The results suggest that the development of the life insurance market is associated with both economic performance and the level of social investment.