Effect of Health Care Expenditures on Child Mortality Rates: A Case Study of Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

In the process of trying to reduce the risk of child mortality across the world, financing is crucial in the delivery of positive results. This research was carried to evaluate how healthcare expenditures affect child mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Some researchers on this topic have claimed healthcare expenditure has an influence on child mortality while others differ with the ideas. This research divided healthcare expenditure into public, private, and total healthcare expenditures and analyzed them differently on how they affect child mortality. Additionally, it employed panel data for 32 SSA states instead of 45 states due to data availability. The data utilized was from the World Bank’s Development Indicators from 2005 to 2016. The data for under-five and infant mortalities were used to represent child mortality rates. The result from the panel linear regression showed that healthcare expenditure has a significant effect on child mortality rates. The elasticity estimation results indicate public and total expenditures are more significant and have high effects on child mortality rates than private expenditure. The findings from the study suggest that healthcare expenditure reduces child mortality rates but after some time to deliver the right as financing is a time dimensional variable. The study recommends that the healthcare expenditure in the health sector in SSA should be continuous and done in effective ways to reduce child mortality rates.