Political determinants of health: (re) examining the role of governance in reducing maternal mortality

Given change in the universal developmental agenda and the quality of governance in the last two decades, this paper re-examines the relationship between governance, health expenditure and maternal mortality using panel data for 184 countries from 1996 to 2019. By employing the ‘dynamic panel data regression model’, the study reveals that a one-point improvement in the governance index decreases maternal mortality by 10–21%. We also find that good governance can better translate health expenditure into improved maternal health outcomes through effective allocation and equitable distribution of available resources. These results are robust to alternative instruments, alternative dependent variables (such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy), estimation by different governance dimensions and at the sub-national level. Additional findings using ‘Quantile regression’ estimates show that the quality of governance matters more than the health expenditure in countries with a higher level of maternal mortality. While the ‘Path regression’ analysis exhibits the specific direct and indirect mechanisms through which the causal inference operates between governance and maternal mortality.