Impact of Government Health Expenditure on Health Outcomes in the West African Sub-Region

Abstract

Research background: Health outcome such as infant mortality rate is an important measure of the standard of living. It is a part of Millennium Development Goals, which all countries of the World strive to achieve, by allocating enormous economic resources to the health sector respectively. Purpose: The study assessed the impact of government expenditure on health and on health outcome (infant mortality rate) in the West Africa Sub-region. Research methodology: Secondary data were collected from 2000 to 2015 on thirteen countries in the Sub-region. Owing to the fact that the nature of the data involved is macro-panel data, the study performed the pre-estimation test (such as panel unit-root test and co-integration test) to ascertain the time series properties of the series. Based on the results of the pre-estimation tests, the work employed the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS). Results: It is found in the study that public health spending has an indirect impact on infant mortality rate in the West Africa Sub-region. Novelty: No extant study examined the impact of public expenditure on health and on maternal mortality rate using the West Africa Sub-region as an area of coverage. This study employed a fully modified OLS (FMOLS) to assess the impact of public expenditure on health and on infant mortality rate in the West Africa Sub-region.

The effectiveness of public health spending in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“…The effectiveness of PHS in enhancing population health outcomes in developed countries has been the subject of extensive research (Berger & Messer, 2002;Budhdeo et al, 2015;Hsu, 2013;Lera-Lopez et al, 2016;Onofrei et al, 2021). However, the topic has received little attention in the context of sub-Saharan countries, where the existing empirical literature on PHS in SSA has produced inconsistent results (Chansa et al, 2020;Filmer & Pritchett, 1999;Grekou & Perez, 2014;Makuta & O'Hare, 2015;Mustapha et al, 2021;Osakede, 2021). Most of these studies used different mortality-based indicators to measure population health outcomes, relied on aggregated data to measure PHS, and investigated the direct relationship between PHS and population health outcomes by concentrating on the ultimate effect of PHS on population health outcomes.…”

“…In SSA, the main governmental policy for improving population health outcomes is increasing PHS (Olayiwola et al, 2020;WHO, 2016b;Xu et al, 2022). Moreover, the relevance of this policy has been supported by the literature (Chireshe & Ocran, 2020;Mustapha et al, 2021), especially Grossman's (1972), which model posits that individuals possess an initial stock of health that depreciates over time but can be increased through funding, including public and private health spending (Grossman, 1972). In other words, in theory, financial investment in health plays a role in determining population health outcomes.…”