The Impact of Public Health Expenditure on Health Outcomes in South Africa

Abstract

Health holds an important position in maintaining economic development since it is both a prerequisite for and an outcome of economic development. This means that health contributes greatly to the attainment of sustainable development and health outcomes. The importance of health is demonstrated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) where three of the eight goals are aimed at improving health outcomes. Despite progress made by other middle-income countries in achieving health-related MDGs, South Africa is still worse off in respect of health outcomes and experiences a challenge in attaining positive outcomes for these goals. This study’s main focus was to identify the association between public health expenditure and health outcomes in South Africa’s nine provinces from 2002 to 2016. The study implemented fixed effects and a random effects panel data estimation technique to control for time effects and individual provincial heterogeneity. This was followed by employing the Hausman specification test to identify the fixed effects model as the appropriate estimator for the study. The study also employed the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model and the least squares dummy variable (LSDV) model to examine the impact of public health expenditure on each province separately. The findings elucidated that the relationship between public health expenditure and health outcomes in South Africa varied across provinces depending on provincial management and infrastructure availability.

Association between health expenditures, economic growth and environmental pollution: Long‐run and causality analysis from Asian economies

“…Environmental pollution is detrimental for health and increase the per capita public expenditures on health in Asian countries and 56 on Indonesia. Moreover, environmental pollution is the major cause of increase in burden on general public to spend more on health and corroborates the findings of Hlafa et al 84 on South Africa;…”

“…on Indonesia. Moreover, environmental pollution is the major cause of increase in burden on general public to spend more on health and corroborates the findings of Hlafa et al 84 . on South Africa; Raeissl et al 83 .…”

Democracy, Culture and Cancer Patients’ Willingness to Pay for Healthcare Services: A Meta-analysis

“… 12 A possible explains for this is that longer lifespans in a country where most population are old 64 which elderly individuals may face with choosing between spending for health care or daily living expenses. 65 An another alternative explanation for these findings might be that there are results that larger public health expenditure increase life expectancy 66 , 67 and longer lifespans generates higher public health expenditure because older individuals tend to use healthcare services more often than younger persons. 63 Therefore, it could be that there is a correlation between public health expenditure and life expectancy (see for example: Jaba et al, 68 and Bein et al 69 ).…”

Are Wealthy Countries Always Healthy? Health Outcomes and Public Health Spending Nexus in Nigeria

“…In South Africa, Hlafa et al (2019) investigated the association between public health expenditure and health outcomes in South Africa's nine provinces from 2002 to 2016. Adopting the fixed effects and a random effects panel data estimation technique to control for time effects and individual provincial heterogeneity, the findings elucidated that the relationship between public health expenditure and health outcomes in South Africa varied across provinces depending on provincial management and infrastructure availability.…”