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Impact of voluntary community-based health insurance on child stunting: Evidence from rural Uganda

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  • Nshakira-Rukundo, Emmanuel
  • Mussa, Essa Chanie
  • Gerber, Nicolas
  • von Braun, Joachim

Abstract

While community-based health insurance increasingly becomes part of the health financing landscape in developing countries, there is still limited research about its impacts on health outcomes. Using cross-sectional data from rural south-western Uganda, we apply a two-stage residual inclusion instrumental variables method to study the impact of insurance participation on child stunting in under-five children. We find that one year of a household's participation in community-based health insurance was associated with a 4.3 percentage point less probability of stunting. Children of two years or less dominated the effect but there were also statistically significant benefits of enrolling in insurance after a child's birth. The expansion of community-based health insurance might have more dividends to improving health, in addition to financial protection and service utilisation in rural developing countries.

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  • Nshakira-Rukundo, Emmanuel & Mussa, Essa Chanie & Gerber, Nicolas & von Braun, Joachim, 2020. "Impact of voluntary community-based health insurance on child stunting: Evidence from rural Uganda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 245(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:245:y:2020:i:c:s0277953619307336
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112738
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