Introduction: An increase in the share of defense expenditures from the total public expenditures may have a negative effect on the share of public health expenditures from the total public expenditures due to the concept of opportunity cost and through the crowding-out effect. The intensity of this effect can change according to the income level. Based on this, the main purpose of this study is to estimate the crowding-out effect of defense expenditures on public health expenditures in countries with different income groups.Methods: The present descriptive-analytical and applied study using the panel data of 90 countries of the world (including Iran) during the period of 2000-2018, to estimate the crowding-out effect of defense expenditures on public health expenditures by separating the studied countries into three income groups including low and below average income, above average income countries and high income countries, and also to examine the cross-sectional effect of defense expenditures and per capita income on public health expenditures in all sample countries. The data used were also collected from the World Health Organization database, World Development Indicators belonging to the World Bank and SIPRI. Also, the models were estimated in the form of dynamic panel data using stationery and panel cointegration analyzes and Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) in Eviews10.0 software.Results: The results show that the crowding-out effect of defense expenditures on public health expenditures in terms of elasticity and for countries with low and below average income, countries with above average income and countries with high income are equivalent to -0.654, -0.453 and -0.316 respectively. The cross-sectional effect of defense expenditures and per capita income on public health expenditures of all the studied countries is also positive and equal to 0.112.Conclusion: The (negative) crowding-out effect of defense expenditures on public health expenditures is confirmed for all countries with different income groups; But with the increase in per capita income, this crowding-out effect decreases exponentially. Based on this, it is necessary to adopt the necessary policies to ensure security without spending high defense expenditures, especially in countries with low per capita income, in order to prevent the reduction of public health expenses.
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