Causal nexus between health expenditure, health outcome and economic growth: Empirical evidence from Sub‐Saharan Africa countries

Edmond Kamanda, Yang Lanpin and Brima Sesay

International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2022, vol. 37, issue 4, 2284-2302

Abstract: Introduction The relationships among health expenditure, health outcome, and economic growth have been given significant consideration in the current literature. Nevertheless, there are potential gaps in the nature of health‐growth nexus that current empirical studies have not thoroughly considered. Methodology This study explores Granger causality and cointegration relationships in a trivariate framework among, health expenditure, health outcome, and economic growth. We used three health outcome measures and a panel vector autoregressive model to study 45 countries in Sub‐Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2018. Our innovative panel data evaluation technique allows to ascertain significant causal relationships among the studied variables in the short and long run. Results Findings from the study include (1) health expenditure and health outcome Granger‐cause economic growth in the long run; (2) economic growth Granger‐cause health expenditure in the short run; (3) no causal relationship was found running from health expenditure and health outcome to economic growth in the short‐run. The former result (1) may not be surprising, given that the countries considered in this study are relatively less developed countries from Sub‐Saharan Africa. Hence, further health improvement may play a statistically significant role in spurring further economic growth. Conclusion Based on the results, the study presents interesting and possible effective policy perspectives for health improvement in the studied countries. Policies that stimulate health spending are needed to create a better and more industrious society that can support SSA's economic progress. This is because a healthy person may be more productive than someone who is sick, allowing them to produce greater output.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.3469

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:bla:ijhplm:v:37:y:2022:i:4:p:2284-2302

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0749-6753

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Health Planning and Management is currently edited by Calum Paton

More articles in International Journal of Health Planning and Management from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().