Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditure in Sub Saharan Africa: The Role of Government and External Health Expenditures

Tewa Papy Voto () and Nicholas Ngepah
Additional contact information
Tewa Papy Voto: Auckland Park Kingsway Campus, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa
Nicholas Ngepah: Department of Economic and Econometrics, College of Business and Economics, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa

Economies, 2025, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-21

Abstract: This study aims to analyze the impact of government and external health spending on OOPHE across 30 SSA countries from 1995 to 2021. Using advanced econometric techniques, including the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed Lags (CS-ARDL) model and the dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE) approach, the study examined both short-term and long-term effects. Findings reveal that in the long term, government health expenditure (GHE) has a more significant impact on reducing OOPHE compared to external health expenditure (EHE). However, in the short term, GHE initially increases OOPHE, while EHE directly reduces it. This suggests that increasing GHE is more effective for long-term progress towards SDG 3. In contrast, EHE can provide immediate relief in the short term. To achieve SDG 3, policymakers should focus on increasing GHE for sustained improvements while leveraging EHE to address short-term challenges. Combining both strategies can optimize progress toward ensuring universal health coverage and well-being for all.

Keywords: OOPHE; GHE; EHE; CS-ARDL; DCCE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/5/119/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/5/119/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:13:y:2025:i:5:p:119-:d:1641454

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Hongyan Zhang

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().