Health Aid and Health Improvement in Sub Saharan Africa

Abstract

Abstract:Using a sample of 28 sub-Saharan African countries during the period of 2000-2010, this paper examines the effect of health aid on health outcomes. After taking into account the endogeneity and using the instrumental variable approach, the results reveal that health aid improves health outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. More specifically, for each additional unit of health aid, life expectancy increases by 0.14, prevalence of HIV decreases by 0.05 and infant mortality decrease by 0.17. This effect operates mainly through the improvement of primary completion rate of female. However, the magnitude of the effects is too small if African countries would like to achieve MDGs through additional health aid.Furthermore, the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition indicates that differences in terms of the amount of health aid received do not explain the health outcomes gap between post conflict countries and stable countries. The relevant variables are governance and the female primary completion rate. The policy implications of the paper are further discussed.

Official development assistance, income per capita and health outcomes in developing countries: Is Africa different?

“…Mix findings characterized the results of the extant literature on the effect of official development assistance and health outcome (Bendavid & Bhattacharya, 2014;Ebeke & Drabo, 2011;Gupta et al, 2018;Kotsadam et al, 2018;Maju et al, 2019;Mallaye & Yogo, 2012;Ndikumana & Pickbourna, 2016;Negeri & Halemariam, 2016;Oryema et al, 2017;Pitt et al, 2018). One strand of the literature reports that aid improves health outcomes, promoting the argument on the effectiveness of aid in promoting development in the recipient country (Chauvet et al, 2008;Ebeke & Drabo, 2011;Mallaye & Yogo, 2012;Masud & Yontcheva, 2005;Negeri & Halemariam, 2016). The proponents of aid-led-development maintains that increase in aid inflow to developing nation increases the availability of basic social-economic goods and services that helps to improve the quality of life in the recipient countries which would not have been made accessible to the citizenry if aid were not provided.…”

“…Mix findings characterized the results of the extant literature on the effect of official development assistance and health outcome (Bendavid & Bhattacharya, 2014;Ebeke & Drabo, 2011;Gupta et al, 2018;Kotsadam et al, 2018;Maju et al, 2019;Mallaye & Yogo, 2012;Ndikumana & Pickbourna, 2016;Negeri & Halemariam, 2016;Oryema et al, 2017;Pitt et al, 2018). One strand of the literature reports that aid improves health outcomes, promoting the argument on the effectiveness of aid in promoting development in the recipient country (Chauvet et al, 2008;Ebeke & Drabo, 2011;Mallaye & Yogo, 2012;Masud & Yontcheva, 2005;Negeri & Halemariam, 2016).…”

“…As numerous as their measures are, researchers have made use of different proxies for health outcomes. Consistent with the work of Negeri and Halemariam (2016), Asiedu et al (2015), and Mallaye and Yogo (2012), this study adopted life expectancy (LE) and under-5-mortality rate as proxies for health outcome in investigating the effect of ODA and income per capita on health outcome. To control for the effect of other socioeconomic variables that affect health outcomes, extant literature included different variables such as the prevalence of HIV, school enrollment, capital formation, etc (Asiedu et al, 2015;Mallaye & Yogo, 2012;Negeri & Halemariam, 2016).…”

“…The optimists argue that foreign aid is a significant determinant of health outcomes in the recipient countries, while the pessimists contend that foreign aid has not contributed significantly to the improvement of health outcomes. Prominent among this two contending views are the works of Kosack (2003), Masud and Yontcheva (2005), Chauvet et al (2008), Kosack and Tobin (2006), Williamson (2008), Wilson et al (2009), Mishra and Newhouse ( 2009), Ebeke and Drabo (2011), Mallaye and Yogo (2012), Bendavid and Bhattacharya (2014), Negeri and Halemariam (2016) In line with the optimistic viewpoint, Mallaye and Yogo (2012) examined the effect of health aid on health outcomes in Africa, employing a panel data of 28 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period of 200-2010. They reported that health aid contributes to improvement in health outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries.…”

“…School enrolment (female), health expenditure was found to have a negative and significant effect on the under 1-year mortality rate, while the prevalence of HIV (female) has a positive and significant effect on the under-1-year mortality rate. Mallaye and Yogo (2012) included school enrolment rate (primary), primary completion rate (female), the urban population as a percentage of the total population, labor force, gross fixed capital formation and composite of governance in estimating the model on the effect of health aid on health outcome. Their result indicates that school enrolment, urban population, primary completion rate are positively associated with life expectancy, the prevalence of HIV with only urban population reporting significant.…”