Impact of voluntary community-based health insurance on child stunting: Evidence from rural Uganda

Emmanuel Nshakira-Rukundo, Essa Mussa, Nicolas Gerber and Joachim von Braun

Social Science & Medicine, 2020, vol. 245, issue C

Abstract: While community-based health insurance increasingly becomes part of the health financing landscape in developing countries, there is still limited research about its impacts on health outcomes. Using cross-sectional data from rural south-western Uganda, we apply a two-stage residual inclusion instrumental variables method to study the impact of insurance participation on child stunting in under-five children. We find that one year of a household's participation in community-based health insurance was associated with a 4.3 percentage point less probability of stunting. Children of two years or less dominated the effect but there were also statistically significant benefits of enrolling in insurance after a child's birth. The expansion of community-based health insurance might have more dividends to improving health, in addition to financial protection and service utilisation in rural developing countries.

Keywords: Community-based health insurance; Stunting; Instrumental variables; Rural Uganda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:245:y:2020:i:c:s0277953619307336

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112738

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