Author, Institution: Rasa Railaitė, Kaunas University of Technology
Science area, field of science: Social Sciences, Economics, S004
Scientific Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rūta Čiutienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Social sciences, Management S003, Economics S004).
Dissertation Defence Board of Economics Science Field:
Prof. Dr. Gražina Startienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Social sciences, Eonomics – S004) – chairwoman;
Dr. Łukasz Nazarko (Bialystok University of Technology, Social sciences, Economics – S004),
Prof. Dr. Vaida Pilinkienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Social sciences, Economics – S004),
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ingrida Šarkiūnaitė (Vilnius University, Social sciences, Management – S003),
Prof. Dr. Dalia Štreimikienė (Lithuanian Energy Institute, Social sciences, Economics – S004).
The doctoral dissertation is available at the library of Kaunas University of Technology (K. Donelaičio St. 20, 44239 Kaunas, Lithuania), Klaipėda University (K. Donelaičio a. 3, 92144 Klaipėda), Lithuanian Energy Institute (Breslaujos st. 3, 44403 Kaunas).
Annotation:
Different regions and countries have a different stock of human capital, so an important question becomes an identification of the reasons that leads to this difference. In many cases, it is agreed that health is a significant component in the theory of human capital, however it could be stated that it receives less attention compared with the education component. There is a lack of research where human capital would not be analysed as an intermediate link explaining the impact of health investment on the economic growth, but the impact of public investment in health to human capital would be analyzed. Thus, this dissertation seeks to assess the impact of public investment in health to the human capital in the context of an aging population. An evaluation model has been developed to achieve this goal. The model includes public investment in health and other external factors that can affect human capital. Panel data covering 28 EU countries and an 18-year period were used to assess this impact. After evaluating the methodological problems of human capital assessment, it is proposed to assess the impact of public investment in health using 4 indicators. The performed analysis showed that different values of the impact factor are identified when different indicators expressing human capital are used. Also, it was found that the impact of public health investment to human capital varies across groups of countries with different levels of population aging.
