Innovation, lifestyle, policy and socioeconomic factors: An analysis of European quality of life

The need to innovate in order to adapt to continuous changes in the environment affects all production units, but this may be particularly true of the health sector, which is key to ensuring healthy lives. However, the day-to-day running of a country absorbs nearly all its economic resources, with health innovation being consistently overlooked and only coming to the fore in isolated cases of public emergencies. This research has a twofold objective. First, it analyses the efficiency of national expenditure on research and development (R&D) in the health sector and the changes in productivity that occurred in the period 2009-2017, using DEA-Bootstrap and the Global Malmquist Index. Second, regression models are used to quantify the relative importance of said efficiency for the health status of the population, introducing other aspects that a priori could also be expected to affect this status. The sample is composed of 23 European OECD countries, and a biennial data analysis is carried out to ensure the results are stable over time, as well as to study the particular case of each of the countries analysed. The results reveal that efficiency is not determined by the volume of resources allocated to health innovation. The budget that Norway assigns to R&D in the health sector is only a quarter that of Germany's, but it more efficiently transforms that spending into quality of life. In addition, the level of happiness, the country's wealth, and spending on health are the factors that have the greatest effect on the perceived health status of the European population.