Determinants of Health Insurance Enrollment and Health Expenditure in Ghana: An Empirical Analysis

Kwame Adjei-Mantey and Charles Horioka ()

No DP2022-01, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

Abstract: This paper analyzes the determinants of health insurance enrollment and health expenditure in Ghana using micro data from wave 7 of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) with emphasis on the role of risk preferences and the availability of health facilities in one’s own community, neither of which has been emphasized in the previous literature on this topic. It is possible to analyze the determinants of health insurance enrollment in Ghana because its public health insurance system (the National Health Insurance Scheme or NHIS) is, in theory, mandatory, but is, in actual practice, voluntary, with only about 40% of the population enrolled in the scheme. Our empirical findings show that risk preferences have a significant impact on health insurance enrollment, with risk averse individuals being significantly more likely than other households to enroll in health insurance, as one would expect. Moreover, our findings also show that very poor households are significantly more likely to enroll in health insurance than other households, perhaps because they are exempt from paying premiums for health insurance. This finding suggests that NHIS is achieving its intended objective of increasing the poor’s access to health care. Finally, our findings also show that the availability of health facilities in one’s own community significantly decreases expenditures on health care, which underscores the importance of ensuring an equitable spatial distribution of health facilities throughout the country.

Keywords: Ghana; Health expenditure; Health facilities; Health insurance; Medical insurance; Risk preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D12 D81 I12 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2022-01.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of health insurance enrollment and health expenditure in Ghana: an empirical analysis (2023)
Working Paper: Determinants of health insurance enrollment and health expenditure in Ghana: An empirical analysis (2022)
Working Paper: Determinants of health insurance enrollment and health expenditure in Ghana: An empirical analysis (2022)
Working Paper: Determinants of Health Insurance Enrollment and Health Expenditure in Ghana: An Empirical Analysis (2022)
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:kob:dpaper:dp2022-01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University 2-1 Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657-8501 JAPAN. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University ().