earticle

영어

This paper analyzes the effects of population aging on the medical consumption expenditure based on auto-regressive distributed lag(ADL) model. By estimating medical consumption expenditure function, elasticities of age-specific income, price, and interest rate were derived and the impacts of population aging on medical consumption expenditure were investigated using quarterly data from 1990 to 2016. Essential estimation statistics of our model showed well as 0.85 ∼ 0.98 in  , no serial correlation, and satisfying 1% significance level in t-values. As main empirical results, first, Income elasticities were shown to be the biggest value 0.60 in the lower thirties and the smallest one of 0.29 in the upper sixties. These results means accelerating population aging will functions as a declining factor in medical industry. Second, price elasticities were found to be –1.04 in the household average and the most responsive value of -2.06 in the forties and the least responsive one of -0.52 in the upper sixties. As households older, their medical expenditure responded less to the relative price change of medical commodities which means these are near to necessities to them. If price of medical commodities will change in the declining direction, this will be a positive factor in growing of medical industry. Regardless of age groups, interest rate showed negative relation to the medical consumption expenditure. Interest rate elasticities were estimated to be –0.177 in the household average, the most responsive value –2.60 in the upper sixties, and the least responsive one –0.11 in the lower thirties. Due to recent Corona-19 disaster and low interest rat policy of U.S.A., on-going very low level of interest rate will contribute to growing demand in medical industry.