Good health with good institutions. an empirical analysis for italian regions

In this paper, we investigate the role of institutional quality in explaining cross-regional variation of population health status. To this purpose, the analysis follows two steps. First, we introduce a composite regional health status indicator (RHSI) summarizing life expectancy, mortality and morbidity data. Then, we study the empirical relationship between RHSI and a set of socio-economic, health system and institutional controls over a panel of 21 territorial units (19 regions and 2 autonomous provinces) over the period 2011-2019. As a first result the analysis shows that institutional quality is a fundamental driver for population health. Furthermore, we find that well-functioning institutions and LEAs implementation make the socio-economic context no longer relevant for population health, and this can lead to a reduction in inequalities.