IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/68671.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Determinants of Child Mortality in Africa: A Methodological Discussion

Author

Listed:
  • Enami, Ali

Abstract

Current literature is ambiguous regarding the significance of public health expenditure in reducing mortality rate among children in cross country studies. In fact, several previous studies found the relationship between these two variables to be insignificant. Such findings indicate the existence of a huge inefficiency in public sector of struggling countries and discourage supports provided by donating entities. This study addresses the disagreement in the literature by pointing out how results are sensitive to the use of non-stationary variables that are used often in the literature. Using a Panel Vector Autoregressive model, no empirical evidence for the role of public health expenditure in reducing child mortality is found when non-stationary variables are used. However, results are significantly different as soon as stationary variables are substituted in the same model. In fact, the elasticity of under five mortality rate with respect to per capita public health expenditure is about -0.22 for African countries in the sample.

Suggested Citation

  • Enami, Ali, 2016. "Determinants of Child Mortality in Africa: A Methodological Discussion," MPRA Paper 68671, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:68671
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/68671/1/MPRA_paper_68671.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alok Bhargava & Dean T. Jamison & Lawrence J. Lau & Christopher J. L. Murray, 2006. "Modeling the effects of health on economic growth," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Econometrics, Statistics And Computational Approaches In Food And Health Sciences, chapter 20, pages 269-286, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Pierre‐Yves Crémieux & Marie‐Claude Meilleur & Pierre Ouellette & Patrick Petit & Martin Zelder & Ken Potvin, 2005. "Public and private pharmaceutical spending as determinants of health outcomes in Canada," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 107-116, February.
    3. Wagstaff, Adam & Moreno-Serra, Rodrigo, 2009. "Europe and central Asia's great post-communist social health insurance experiment: Aggregate impacts on health sector outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 322-340, March.
    4. Johar, Meliyanni, 2009. "The impact of the Indonesian health card program: A matching estimator approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 35-53, January.
    5. Christina Paxson & Norbert Schady, 2005. "Child Health and Economic Crisis in Peru," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 19(2), pages 203-223.
    6. Herrera, Santiago & Pang, Gaobo, 2005. "Efficiency of public spending in developing countries : an efficiency frontier approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3645, The World Bank.
    7. Farasat A. S. Bokhari & Yunwei Gai & Pablo Gottret, 2007. "Government health expenditures and health outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 257-273, March.
    8. Wang, Limin, 2003. "Determinants of child mortality in LDCs: Empirical findings from demographic and health surveys," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 277-299, September.
    9. Filmer, Deon & Pritchett, Lant, 1999. "The impact of public spending on health: does money matter?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(10), pages 1309-1323, November.
    10. Weathers, Robert R. & Stegman, Michelle, 2012. "The effect of expanding access to health insurance on the health and mortality of Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 863-875.
    11. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    12. Currie, Janet & Decker, Sandra & Lin, Wanchuan, 2008. "Has public health insurance for older children reduced disparities in access to care and health outcomes?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1567-1581, December.
    13. John Anyanwu & Andrew E. O. Erhijakpor, 2009. "Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 21(2), pages 400-433.
    14. Martin, Stephen & Rice, Nigel & Smith, Peter C., 2008. "Does health care spending improve health outcomes? Evidence from English programme budgeting data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 826-842, July.
    15. Love, Inessa & Zicchino, Lea, 2006. "Financial development and dynamic investment behavior: Evidence from panel VAR," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 190-210, May.
    16. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    17. Rajkumar, Andrew Sunil & Swaroop, Vinaya, 2008. "Public spending and outcomes: Does governance matter?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 96-111, April.
    18. Buor, Daniel, 2003. "Mothers' education and childhood mortality in Ghana," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 297-309, June.
    19. Barham, Tania & Maluccio, John A., 2009. "Eradicating diseases: The effect of conditional cash transfers on vaccination coverage in rural Nicaragua," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 611-621, May.
    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. Hilaire Gbodja Houeninvo, 2022. "Effects of health expenditures on infant and child mortality rates: A dynamic panel data analysis of 37 African countries," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 34(2), pages 255-267, June.
    2. Mohanty, Ranjan Kumar & Behera, Deepak Kumar, 2020. "How Effective is Public Health Care Expenditure in Improving Health Outcome? An Empirical Evidence from the Indian States," Working Papers 20/300, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    3. Seemab Gillani & Muhammad Nouman Shafiq & Tusawar Iftikhar Ahmad, 2019. "Military Expenditures and Health Outcomes: A Global Perspective," iRASD Journal of Economics, International Research Alliance for Sustainable Development (iRASD), vol. 1(1), pages 1-20, June.
    4. Seemab Gillani & Muhammad Nouman Shafiq & Tusawar Iftikhar Ahmad, 2019. "Military Expenditures and Health Outcomes: A Global Perspective," iRASD Journal of Energy and Environment, International Research Association for Sustainable Development (iRASD), vol. 1(1), pages 1-20, June.
    5. Stephen Hall & Janine Illian & Innocent Makuta & Kyle McNabb & Stuart Murray & Bernadette AM O’Hare & Andre Python & Syed Haider Ali Zaidi & Naor Bar-Zeev, 2021. "Government Revenue and Child and Maternal Mortality," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 213-229, February.
    6. Micheal Kofi Boachie & K. Ramu & Tatjana Põlajeva, 2018. "Public Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes: New Evidence from Ghana," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-25, October.
    7. Zechariah Langnel & Ponlapat Buracom, 2020. "Governance, health expenditure and infant mortality in sub‐Saharan Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 32(4), pages 673-685, December.
    8. Gebregziabher, Fiseha & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2014. "Social spending and aggregate welfare in developing and transition economies," WIDER Working Paper Series 082, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Noshaba Aziz & Jun He & Tanwne Sarker & Hongguang Sui, 2021. "Exploring the Role of Health Expenditure and Maternal Mortality in South Asian Countries: An Approach towards Shaping Better Health Policy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-14, November.
    10. Jeffrey Kouton & Rafiou R. Bétila & Moïse Lawin, 2021. "The Impact of ICT Development on Health Outcomes in Africa: Does Economic Freedom Matter?," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(4), pages 1830-1869, December.
    11. Iyad Dhaoui, 2019. "Healthcare system efficiency and its determinants: A two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) from MENA countries," Working Papers 1320, Economic Research Forum, revised 21 Aug 2019.
    12. Fiseha Gebregziabher & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, 2014. "Social Spending and Aggregate Welfare in Developing and Transition Economies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-082, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Micheal Kofi Boachie & Tatjana Põlajeva & Albert Opoku Frimpong, 2020. "Infant Mortality in Low- and Middle-income Countries: Does Government Health Spending Matter?," Journal of Development Policy and Practice, , vol. 5(1), pages 54-73, January.
    14. Bernadette O'Hare & Steve G. Hall, 2022. "The Impact of Government Revenue on the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Amplification Potential of Good Governance," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 14(2), pages 109-129, June.
    15. Bousmah, Marwân-al-Qays & Ventelou, Bruno & Abu-Zaineh, Mohammad, 2016. "Medicine and democracy: The importance of institutional quality in the relationship between health expenditure and health outcomes in the MENA region," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(8), pages 928-935.
    16. Ruolz Ariste & Livio Di Matteo, 2017. "Value for money: an evaluation of health spending in Canada," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 289-310, September.
    17. Jessica Ochalek & Miqdad Asaria & Pei Fen Chuar & James Lomas & Sumit Mazumdar & Karl Claxton, 2019. "Assessing health opportunity costs for the Indian health care systems," Working Papers 161cherp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    18. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Janet Exornam Ocloo & Diana Siawor-Robertson, 2017. "Ethnic Diversity and Health Outcomes," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 1077-1112, December.
    19. Mongbet Zounkifirou & TOURERE Zenabou & Poutouochi Mongapna Arouna, 2021. "Health Spending, Democracy and Child Mortality in Developing Countries," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 5(09), pages 654-661, September.
    20. Gallet, Craig A. & Doucouliagos, Hristos, 2017. "The impact of healthcare spending on health outcomes: A meta-regression analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 9-17.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Under five mortality rate; public health expenditure; female education; panel vector autoregressive; impulse-response analysis.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:pra:mprapa:68671. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.