Health Expenditure and Selected Health-Related Millennium Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been identified as the region least likely to achieve the MDGs. Of all the MDGs, those related to health seem far out of reach of the region even though SSA countries have been making efforts to achieve them. The unmatched nature of the efforts and outcomes has attracted several concerns in the literature. One variable that is very crucial to the advancement of the region towards the health-related MDGs is health expenditure. Though there are several studies that focus on the relationship between health expenditure and health outcomes only a few have focused on the disaggregated effects of the public and private components of health expenditure on health outcomes in SSA. This gap in the existing literature necessitated the current study. The study sought to investigate the effects of public and private health expenditures on selected health-related MDGs, namely, child health and maternal health, in SSA. Data was gathered from 40 countries in SSA over the period 2000-2010 and was analysed using the fixed effects estimation technique. The results indicate that public health expenditure has a negative and significant effect on child health measured by under-five and infant mortalities whereas it has a negative insignificant effect on maternal health proxied by maternal mortality ratio in SSA. The results also revealed that private health expenditure is not a significant determinant of under-five, infant and maternal mortalities in SSA. Real GDP per capita and female literacy rate were found to negatively affect under-five, infant and maternal mortalities in SSA. Maternal mortality was further found to be negatively affected by the effectiveness of government in the region whereas the proportion of the population with access to improved water source was found to be negatively related to under-five and infant mortalities in the region. The study recommends that the Abuja Declaration on health should be enforced in the region and female literacy should be enhanced in SSA. Furthermore, policy makers should endeavour to provide improved water source to a greater proportion of the population.