Are people in the SADC region willing to pay more tax to fund public healthcare?

Abstract

ABSTRACT For Africa to develop and achieve sustainable development, African governments have to prioritise spending on public health. However, the current spending data shows that health spending is a continuing struggle for African countries. Many researchers have the view that African governments have to collect more tax to spend enough on public healthcare. The question here is what extent people are willing to pay more tax to increase spending on public healthcare? Employing a multilevel regression model on Afrobarometer survey data, this paper examined to what extent individual and country level factors influence people’s willingness to pay more tax to increase spending on public healthcare in 12 Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states. This study found that peoples’ trust in their government is an important determinant of willingness to pay more tax, while factors such as the country’s quality of democracy, economic condition, and current per capita health expenditure have no influence.