Social protection in Kenya: designing a proxy means testing tool to achieve universal health coverage

Pius Miri Ng'ang'a, David Khaoya and Precious Zikhali

No wp-2025-99, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: Health subsidization for the poor in Kenya is one of the social protection priority programs for achieving universal health care. This study aimed to develop a proxy means testing (PMT) tool that can be used by the Ministry of Health in Kenya for targeting the poor in health insurance subsidization and to determine the ability of households in the informal sector to pay for social health insurance. To develop the PMT, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (lasso) regression, which uses a machine learning algorithm, was used for both variable selection and prediction.

Keywords: Targeting; Poverty; Health insurance; Poverty measurement; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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