Health care expenditure and health outcomes in sub‐Saharan African countries

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of health care expenditure on health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using data from 1995 to 2018 for 45 countries. It uses fixed effects and generalized methods of moments estimation approaches for the analysis. The paper measures health care expenditure using three proxies: namely, total health care expenditure per capita, public health care expenditure to gross domestic product (GDP), and private health care expenditure to total health expenditure. Health outcomes are measured by child health outcomes (under-5 mortality rate) and life expectancy. The results show that increase in health care expenditure as measured by total health care expenditure per capita and public health care expenditure to GDP leads to decline in under-5 mortality rates. The results also show that total health care expenditure per capita leads to an increase in life expectancy. The study therefore recommends that governments in SSA increase budget allocations towards the health care sector to achieve better health outcomes.

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