EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The impact of public spending on health: does money matter?

Deon Filmer and Lant Pritchett

Social Science & Medicine, 1999, vol. 49, issue 10, 1309-1323

Abstract: We use cross-national data to examine the impact of both public spending on health and non-health factors (economic, educational, cultural) in determining child (under-5) and infant mortality. There are two striking findings. First, the impact of public spending on health is quite small, with a coefficient that is typically both numerically small and statistically insignificant at conventional levels. Independent variation in public spending explains less than one-seventh of 1% of the observed differences in mortality across countries. The estimates imply that for a developing country at average income levels the actual public spending per child death averted is $50,000-100,000. This stands in marked contrast to the typical range of estimates of the cost effectiveness of medical interventions to avert the largest causes of child mortality in developing countries, which is $10-4000. We outline three possible explanations for this divergence of the actual and apparent potential of public spending. Second, whereas health spending is not a powerful determinant of mortality, 95% of cross-national variation in mortality can be explained by a country's income per capita, inequality of income distribution, extent of female education, level of ethnic fragmentation, and predominant religion.

Keywords: Health; Public; expenditure; Child; mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (250)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(99)00150-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:socmed:v:49:y:1999:i:10:p:1309-1323

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:49:y:1999:i:10:p:1309-1323