PUBLIC HEALTH FINANCING MODEL AND UNDER-FIVE MORTALITY RATE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Despite enormous resources committed to reduce under-five mortality rate in Nigeria, not much has been achieved. This paper, therefore, examined the impact of public health expenditure on under-five mortality rate in Nigeria from 1986 to 2022 using the Grossman health capital theoretical framework. The variables used in this study included the under-five mortality rate as the dependent variable and foreign direct investment, food security, per capita income, urbanization, carbon emission, sanitation, female school attainment and government expenditure. These variables were sourced from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin (CBN), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and World Bank Development Indicator (WDI). The analytical techniques used were the Granger causality test and the vector error correction model (VECM) involving the forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD) and the impulse response functions (IRFs). The result showed that the coefficient of government health expenditure was negative but significantly related to under-five mortality rate while foreign direct investment was negative and insignificant to under-five mortality rate. The result further showed a unidirectional causality between government health expenditure and under-five mortality rate and no causality between foreign direct investment and under-five mortality. From the result the shock of public health expenditure is exogenously weak throughout the ten period horizons implying that public health expenditure had no significant positive impact on under-five mortality rate. This paper recommended among others, the need for government and policy makers to make concerted efforts to ensure full implementation of capital spending on the health sector, as any negative shock from government health expenditure health human development outcome including under-five mortality rate.