IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04141334.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Child Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: Why Public Health Spending Matters

Author

Listed:
  • Carl Grekou

    (EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Romain Perez

Abstract

Since 2000, child mortality has dramatically decreased in Africa. Based on an econometrical analysis over 45 sub-Saharan African countries, this paper analyses the determinants of such evolution, and shows that urbanization, sanitation improvement and GDP growth per capita played a critical role in this overall improvement over 2000-2011. The increase in public health expenditures proved to be also decisive, though the elasticity with mortality rate is much weaker. Reaching the Abuja target of 15% of public health expenditure in total public expenditures would have decreased the under-5 child mortality rate by 9% over 2001-2011. It could further reduce this rate by 14% over 2012-2021, and allow Africa to save 19.8 million of children lives. It would also help the region to achieve the Millennium Development Goal on child mortality (reduce by two thirds under-5 child mortality over 1990-2015) by 2022-23, while it would not be reached before 2027 otherwise, according to our estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl Grekou & Romain Perez, 2014. "Child Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: Why Public Health Spending Matters," Working Papers hal-04141334, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04141334
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04141334
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04141334/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland Craigwell & Danielle Bynoe & Shane Lowe, 2012. "The effectiveness of government expenditure on education and health care in the Caribbean," International Journal of Development Issues, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 4-18, April.
    2. Schultz, T Paul, 1993. "Mortality Decline in the Low-Income World: Causes and Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 337-342, May.
    3. Dumitrescu, Elena-Ivona & Hurlin, Christophe, 2012. "Testing for Granger non-causality in heterogeneous panels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1450-1460.
    4. David Cutler & Angus Deaton & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2006. "The Determinants of Mortality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 97-120, Summer.
    5. Marijn Verhoeven & Mr. Sanjeev Gupta & Mr. Erwin H Tiongson, 1999. "Does Higher Government Spending Buy Better Results in Education and Health Care?," IMF Working Papers 1999/021, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Emanuele Baldacci & Maria Teresa Guin-Siu & Luiz De Mello, 2003. "More on the effectiveness of public spending on health care and education: a covariance structure model," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(6), pages 709-725.
    7. Gupta, Sanjeev & Verhoeven, Marijn & Tiongson, Erwin R., 2002. "The effectiveness of government spending on education and health care in developing and transition economies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 717-737, November.
    8. Filmer, Deon & Pritchett, Lant, 1997. "Child mortality and public spending on health : how much does money matter?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1864, The World Bank.
    9. Luiz de Mello & Mauro Pisu, 2009. "The Effectiveness of Education and Health Spending among Brazilian Municipalities," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 712, OECD Publishing.
    10. Roland Craigwell & Danielle Bynoe & Shane Lowe, 2012. "The effectiveness of government expenditure on education and health care in the Caribbean," International Journal of Development Issues, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 4-18, April.
    11. John Anyanwu & Andrew E. O. Erhijakpor, 2007. "Working Paper 91 - Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa," Working Paper Series 226, African Development Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carl Grekou & Romain Perez, 2014. "Child Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: Why Public Health Spending Matters," EconomiX Working Papers 2014-28, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    2. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 91 - Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa," Working Paper Series 2224, African Development Bank.
    3. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 91 - Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa," Working Paper Series 2304, African Development Bank.
    4. Mr. Emanuele Baldacci & Mr. Larry Q Cui & Mr. Benedict J. Clements & Mr. Sanjeev Gupta, 2004. "Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries: Implications for Achieving the MDGs," IMF Working Papers 2004/217, International Monetary Fund.
    5. ATAKE, Esso - Hanam, 2014. "Financement Public des dépenses de santé et survie infantile au Togo [Public funding of health expenditure and infant survival in Togo]," MPRA Paper 59320, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Oct 2014.
    6. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 92 - Education Expenditures and School Enrolment in Africa: Illustrations from Nigeria and Other SANE Countries," Working Paper Series 2225, African Development Bank.
    7. Gracia De Renteria, Pilar & Ferrer Perez, Hugo & Philippidis, George & Sanjuan Lopez, Ana Isabel, 2021. "Capturing the drivers of social SDGs: An econometric analysis of the dimensions of health and education," Conference papers 333271, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    8. Baldacci, Emanuele & Clements, Benedict & Gupta, Sanjeev & Cui, Qiang, 2008. "Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1317-1341, August.
    9. AfDB AfDB, 2007. "Working Paper 92 - Education Expenditures and School Enrolment in Africa: Illustrations from Nigeria and Other SANE Countries," Working Paper Series 2305, African Development Bank.
    10. John Anyanwu & Andrew E. O. Erhijakpor, 2007. "Working Paper 91 - Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa," Working Paper Series 226, African Development Bank.
    11. Akinlo, Anthony E. & Sulola, Abiola O., 2019. "Health care expenditure and infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 168-178.
    12. Marc Audi & Amjad Ali, 2023. "The Role of Environmental Conditions and Purchasing Power Parity in Determining Quality of Life among Big Asian Cities," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 13(3), pages 292-305, May.
    13. Abdelhafidh Dhrifi & Saleh Alnahdi & Raouf Jaziri, 2021. "The Causal Links Among Economic Growth, Education and Health: Evidence from Developed and Developing Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(3), pages 1477-1493, September.
    14. Boachie, Micheal Kofi & Ramu, K., 2015. "Public Health Expenditure and Health Status in Ghana," MPRA Paper 66371, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Roland Craigwell & Danielle Bynoe & Shane Lowe, 2012. "The effectiveness of government expenditure on education and health care in the Caribbean," International Journal of Development Issues, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 4-18, April.
    16. Bienvenido Ortega & Jesús Sanjuán & Antonio Casquero, 2017. "Determinants of efficiency in reducing child mortality in developing countries. The role of inequality and government effectiveness," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 500-516, December.
    17. Mohamed Dridi, 2014. "Corruption and Education: Empirical Evidence," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 4(3), pages 476-493.
    18. Dhrifi, Abdelhafidh, 2018. "Health-care expenditures, economic growth and infant mortality: evidence from developed and developing countries," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    19. Allen, Summer L. & Badiane, Ousmane & Ulimwengu, John M., 2012. "Government expenditures, social outcomes, and marginal productivity of agricultural inputs: a case study for Tanzania," IFPRI discussion papers 1172, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    20. ATAKE, Esso - Hanam, 2014. "Financement Public des dépenses de santé et survie infantile au Togo [Public funding of health expenditure and infant survival in Togo]," MPRA Paper 59516, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Oct 2014.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04141334. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.