Comparative analysis of healthcare systems in European Union countries based on socio-economic and demographic indicators

Abstract

The growing importance of healthcare in human capital development, enhancing labor productivity, and fostering long-term economic growth highlights the need to evaluate the performance of national healthcare systems amid population aging, increasing demand for healthcare services, and constrained financial resources. Despite a substantial body of research devoted to healthcare system models and their performance assessment, a comprehensive cross-country comparison integrating socioeconomic and demographic indicators using multivariate statistical methods remains underexplored. The aim of this study is to compare the healthcare systems of the European Union countries and evaluate their economic efficiency using correlation and cluster analysis. The study focuses on the healthcare systems of the European Union countries and Ukraine as institutional, organizational, and financial arrangements for the provision of healthcare services. It examines the relationships between indicators of economic development, healthcare financing, and healthcare system performance, as well as the methodological approaches used to assess these relationships. The study is based on statistical data obtained from Eurostat, OECD Health Statistics, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank. The methodological framework comprises comparative analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, and k-means clustering. The performance of healthcare systems is evaluated using indicators of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, labor productivity, healthcare expenditure, life expectancy, and mortality. The correlation analysis revealed statistically significant relationships between the level of economic development and population health outcomes. Specifically, higher levels of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and labor productivity were associated with longer life expectancy and lower mortality rates. Furthermore, the findings indicate that healthcare expenditure as a share of GDP is more strongly associated with population health outcomes than the absolute level of healthcare spending. The application of cluster analysis made it possible to identify three groups of European Union countries with distinct combinations of economic capacity, healthcare financing parameters, and healthcare system performance. The resulting typology revealed substantial heterogeneity among countries in terms of resource availability and population health outcomes. The findings confirm that the performance of national healthcare systems depends not only on the level of healthcare financing but also on the efficiency of resource allocation and utilization.