The importance of healthcare sector services in the economy is growing. Since 1970 the comparative weight of the healthcare sector within the economy of developed countries has increased more than twice and reached around 10% of the GDP in the European Union and around 17% in the United States. People around the world want better health and higher quality healthcare services and are ready to pay more for it (in the form of taxes and/or social health insurance payments). Most forecasters (at least in the medium term) are expecting further growth of health in modern economies.

The goal of the Health Studies Lithuania 2016 is to present statistics regarding changing role of health in modern societies. The first chapter is about mutual causation between growth of GDP and health status of population.

• The second chapter is about changing role of health in national employment, outcomes of national economies as well as interaction between health and agriculture, industry, social insurance
• The third chapter is about national management of health with emphasis on Lithuanian experience what regards development and implementation of long term health strategies
• The forth chapter is about statistics of health costs in line with recent development of National Health Accounts (HEDIC)
• The fifth chapter is about recent development of demographic and health statistics.
   

The study is a continuation of a series of publications developed by Health Economics Center in 2006-2013. These publications had mainly studied functioning of Lithuanian health system thus interplay between health inputs, health outputs and health outcomes. Health Studies Lithuania 2016 is mainly about interplay between development of health sector and development of welfare state. The focus of the paper explains why questions related to demography are concentrated in the last chapter.