The role of governance in the health expenditure–health outcomes nexus: insights from West Africa

Cleopatra Ibukun ()

International Journal of Social Economics, 2021, vol. 48, issue 4, 557-570

Abstract: Purpose - Despite the global attempt at achieving goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals by improving health outcomes, some countries (West African countries inclusive) still do not spend a significant proportion of their income on health and they exhibit health outcomes that are still far below that of developed countries. Besides countries like Nigeria, Chad and Guinea-Bissau are experiencing worsening insecurity and political instability. This study, therefore, examines the effect of health expenditure on three health outcomes in the West African sub-region, while investigating the effect of the quality of governance in this nexus. Design/methodology/approach - This study conducts an instrumental variable approach (two-stage least squares regression) on a panel of 15 West African countries over the period 2000–2018. This study uses three proxies to measure health outcomes and six measures of the quality of governance were also considered. Findings - The result of this study shows that all forms of health expenditures significantly influenced health outcomes. That is, there is a negative relationship between health expenditure, infant mortality and under-five mortality, but a positive relationship between health expenditure and life expectancy at birth. Besides, the general effect of the same quantity of public health spending is subject to the quality of governance because countries with a higher quality of governance benefit better from their public health spending. Originality/value - This study, to the authors' knowledge, is the first empirical attempt to examine the role of governance in the health expenditure-health outcomes nexus in 15 ECOWAS countries, using different measures of health outcomes and governance.

Keywords: Health expenditure; West Africa; Infant mortality; Under-five mortality; Life expectancy; Governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:ijsepp:ijse-06-2020-0404

DOI: 10.1108/IJSE-06-2020-0404

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().