The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: Do government ideology and electoral motives matter?

This paper empirically evaluates whether government Ideology andelectoral motives influenced the growth of public health expenditures in18 OECD countries over the 1971-2004 period The results suggest thatincumbents behaved opportunistically and increased the growth of publichealth expenditures in election years Government Ideology did not havean influence These findings indicate (1) the Importance of public healthin policy debates before elections and (2) the political pressuretowards re-organizing public health policy platforms especially in timesof demographic change