If provinces want a healthier population, they should spend less on health care and more on social services, new Canadian research suggests.“Spending more on health care sounds like it should improve health,” said Daniel Dutton, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.“But our study suggests that is not the case and social spending could be used to improve the health of everyone,” said Dutton, lead author of a study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.Dutton and his fellow researchers looked at health and social spending in nine provinces over 31 years from 1981 to 2011 and compared it to three population health measures: potentially avoidable death, life expectancy and infant mortality (Data from P.E.I. and the territories was unavailable.)They discovered that when social spending increased relative to health spending, premature death went down and life expectancy increased. There was no statistical impact on infant mortality.“More social spending was associated with a more positive outcome. Life expectancy went up and potentially avoidable mortality went down,” Dutton said in an interview. “Places where social spending didn’t keep up with health spending missed out on those gains.”At a time when close to 40 per cent of provincial budgets are spent on health care, the research shows shifting even a small amount of that money to social programs such as social housing, welfare or child care, could reap statistically significant health benefits.“If governments spent one cent more on social services per dollar spent on health by rearranging money between the two portfolios, life expectancy could have experienced an additional 5-per-cent increase and potentially avoidable mortality could have experienced an additional 3-per-cent decrease in one year,” Dutton said.Since most beneficiaries of increased social spending would be those w ...
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