An empirical study on health in Taiwan and its long-term adjustment

This paper investigates the dynamic change of the population health status in Taiwan. Specifically, it provides insight into the empirical determinants of health production function and explores the nature of the long-term adjustment in health performance. For these purposes, panel data are used incorporating dynamic effects as well as controls for unobservable area-specific effect and area-invariant time effect. The findings are consistent with the earlier research in terms of the determinants of the health production function. The result of the present paper suggests that after decades of improvement in health care, people in Taiwan have lower age-adjusted mortality rates. Also, the decreases in mortality rates follow a rapid pace of long-term adjustment implying that health-care policy that focuses on the provision of medical care services substantially benefits the nation's health.